Mech design decisions that make no sense

[StoneRhino]

The problem is that it came out as the same time as the Inner Sphere was seeing a bunch of new heavy cavalry mechs also being deployed.  So just being able to stand off and snipe was not something it could guarantee.  And that's without even considering the Clans, which it was allegedly built to fight.  And the extra heatsinks are especially pointless if it's supposed to be used for fire support: if all it's going to be firing are the Gauss Rifles it can afford to take a dip in Inferno gel without gaining heat before the extra heatsinks are factored in.  That right there is the definition of oversinked.

But your first post mentioned a "standing alpha strike", which I believe would change to 21 heat per turn if it was running. Since it was a clan invasion response mech, the idea of it sitting around and sniping wasn't likely considered, instead to have it constantly on the move while trying to snipe. That would make sense considering the clan's speed advantage against the I.S. The increased speed of I.S. designs post clan invasion isn't really an issue since they were simply trying to match the clans, meaning either way the Cerebus was not going to be facing mechs going the average speed of their 3025 variants.

The 2 rear facing MGs? Yeah, that's kinda odd. Its odd until someone makes a scenario that craps 20 platoons of infantry out of a building that your Gunslinger is standing next to and is trying to get away from. Not the most likely thing to happen in any game, but that would have helped a lot. Aside from that nonsense, the MGs and the extra sink would help against battlearmor....a bit. Its one of those things you wish you had when you need it.

[Caedis Animus]

...unless someone is going to propose a "law" that says teamwork is just covering for weakness?

I was assuming the question as posed was for that specific model of mech in a vacuum.

Either way, the things that do make up for that Axman model's bad decisions (Which, admittedly, aren't that bad now that I'm looking at the design more) don't even begin to absolve the LRM Berserker of its own issues.

[Jellico]

Even ignoring the slow speed, putting the 3 Medium Lasers in the axe arm and the LPL in the off side is unforgivable.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

But your first post mentioned a "standing alpha strike", which I believe would change to 21 heat per turn if it was running. Since it was a clan invasion response mech, the idea of it sitting around and sniping wasn't likely considered, instead to have it constantly on the move while trying to snipe. That would make sense considering the clan's speed advantage against the I.S. The increased speed of I.S. designs post clan invasion isn't really an issue since they were simply trying to match the clans, meaning either way the Cerebus was not going to be facing mechs going the average speed of their 3025 variants.

The 2 rear facing MGs? Yeah, that's kinda odd. Its odd until someone makes a scenario that craps 20 platoons of infantry out of a building that your Gunslinger is standing next to and is trying to get away from. Not the most likely thing to happen in any game, but that would have helped a lot. Aside from that nonsense, the MGs and the extra sink would help against battlearmor....a bit. Its one of those things you wish you had when you need it.

If a Cerberus is using its pulse lasers, it isn't sniping.  If it's sniping, it generates 2 heat from its Gauss Rifles and maybe 1 more heat if its AMS goes off.  Either way, being able to sink 24 heat when it an at most generate 21 is ridiculous: it could be excused on an omnimech with fixed heatsinks in the engine (so long as it made use of that capacity in other variants).  It's completely silly on any Battlemech that isn't a field refit.

Getting away from the Cerb, the 3050 upgrade for the Trebuchet: another mech that uses LRMs, and they slapped a NARC on it.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I have less of a problem with oversinking because I think games ought to use environments that tinker with heat dissipation rates more often.  If you suffer -25% to your dissipation, something that's normally ridiculous/oversinked actually has a strong incentive for use.

Plus, Plasma weapons.  Maybe your opponent uses a lot of them.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Plasma weapons weren't a concern when the Cerberus was built.  I prefer just designing the mech to make better use of bracket firing.

[The_Caveman]

But Infernos were. And Compendium-era Infernos were rude, especially in the hands of hidden SRM infantry. 6 heat per turn that burned for 3 turns per missile that hit you.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The Cerberus is cool enough that an extra six heat a round for a few rounds isn't a huge liability.  Let's remember that it's one of the most heat efficient mechs from 3055, next to such designs as the Grand Titan, which only had enough heat dissipation to handle half its close-range weaponry, or the Huron Warrior, which was still using single heatsinks with an ER Large Laser.

[Getz]

The Cerberus is cool enough that an extra six heat a round for a few rounds isn't a huge liability.  Let's remember that it's one of the most heat efficient mechs from 3055, next to such designs as the Grand Titan, which only had enough heat dissipation to handle half its close-range weaponry, or the Huron Warrior, which was still using single heatsinks with an ER Large Laser.

Don't forget that at the time the Cerberus was published AMS generated a random amount of heat, not the 2 heat it does currently.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

And the impact of high temperature on heat dissipation has been more of a big deal in the lore/fluff/previous editions than it is under TW.

Garrisons on worlds like Altair and Hesperus II are well served by oversinked designs in-universe.

[The_Caveman]

Don't forget that at the time the Cerberus was published AMS generated a random amount of heat, not the 2 heat it does currently.

I think only the ammunition expenditure was random, except maybe in the very earliest incarnation (TRO2750?).

But we also house-ruled AMS to be able to attack multiple flights of missiles per turn back then, as a way of justifying its crazy ammo expenditure. Which could result in a lot of extra heat if you were dealing with missile-heavy opponents.

[Atarlost]

In a 3025 context the AC/5 isn't that bad. It has the same range as a PPC and only 5 points less damage at 1/10 the heat. A PPC by itself is going to eat all of your base 10 heat sinks and you'll need two more to be able to move without building heat. The AC/5 gets you most of the PPC's performance (mind you, the deadliest weapon in 3025 play is the one that does any damage to a 2 or 12 on the location table!) and doesn't penalize you for carrying secondary weapons.

It's double heat sinks what killed the AC/5.

AC-5s were always bad.  You basically never run out of crits building in 3025 and an AC/5 is 2 tons per damage (8 tons of gun, 1 ton of ammo, 1 ton of heatsink) while the PPC is 1.7 tons per damage and 10 is a more advantageous damage grouping because it will break armor on some light mechs and always gets a crit check on a head hit.  The LRM-10 is about 1.83 tons per damage (assuming 6 average damage, 4 heatsinks, and 2 tons of ammo) and the same weight in absolute terms.  The large laser is 1.625 tons per damage.  The AC-10 (with 2 tons ammo and 3 tons of heatsink) is 1.7 tons per point of damage.  If you have more than 1 heatsink available from your engine everything but the AC-5 benefits more. 

If you want to fight close to medium, the LL and AC-10 are just better.  If you want to fight far, LRMs are just better.  If you want to fight at exactly 6 hexes, PPCs are just better.  And on a vehicle AC-5s manage to get worse.  An AC-5 goes down to 1.8 damage per ton, still worse than the PPC, but the LRM-10 drops to 1.17 damage per ton and the AC-10 1.4 damage per ton. 

Before the introduction of the PPC, AC-10, large laser, and LRMs was also before the development of BAR 10 armor.  Against primitive armor a heavy rifle with 3 tons of ammo and 4 heatsinks (eg. on an ASF) is 1.67 tons per point of damage and on a non-heat-tracking vehicle it's 1.22 tons per damage. 

The use cases for AC-5s center around flak and precision ammo and one of these is rare and the other nonexistent in the SHS era.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Don't forget that at the time the Cerberus was published AMS generated a random amount of heat, not the 2 heat it does currently.

I don't ever remember the AMS generating random heat.  Are you sure you're not confusing it with the Rapid Fire rules for machine guns?

[Sartris]

The following sources have the AMS producing one heat. the ammo expenditure and missiles destroyed are randomized.

TRO: 2750 (pg 13)
BTC (pg 143)
BTC: RoW (pg 151)
BMR (pg 115)
BMRr (pg 173)

[Liam's Ghost]

I don't ever remember the AMS generating random heat.  Are you sure you're not confusing it with the Rapid Fire rules for machine guns?

I would assume confusion with the old Laser AMS rules.

[Hellraiser]

Like, the Artemis IV upgrade for the Whitworth.
Or the Goliath upgrade with two tons of MG ammo. "Prototype rushed to production" works only for so far.

The Hellbringer comes to mind as well, though i suppose it can be justified by the fact that without endo-steel or ferro-fibrous, it is relatively easy to repair, and its nature allows for quick duels ("time-economical"), well suited for the Clans. But given that the Clans are perfectly capable of producing designs that are smart and effective, it is really baffling. Then again, i seem to recall that the design competed against even worse designs before it got selected for production...

The Hercules isn't too bad design overall, with its speed and primary armament, but its secondary weapons array is somewhat baffling. Small pulses in the rear? Yes, they're accurate but for anti-infantry use it would've made sense to locate them in the left arm, that way twisting torso would allow shooting more or less behind the 'Mech to keep infantry out of your back. The singular Streak launcher is also a bit dubious, something the field refit partially corrects by adding another Streak by removing the AMS and its ammo.

I don't put those all in the same category really.

I mean, the Whitworth isn't anybody's idea of a close assault boat at 4/6/4 & 40 tons.
So while I wouldn't do it, I can see where the concept of going to Artemis to improve Fire Support made some small sense.

The Hellbringer is another one where the chassis isn't what I hate (though it certainly isn't GOOD) but its the pod configurations that kill me.
2 ERPPCs & 3 ERMLs is fine, but you needed 16 DHS to really make those brackets work.  Not 13.   The A-Pods instead of just more MGs.

Single Streak Hercules is a bit lame when a single ML & HS would get the same job done.  But it doesn't ruin the design & can be excused I suppose.

But then that Goliath w/ 2 tons of MG ammo shows up & THAT one stands out as something that just can't be excused.
Really, 2 Tons of MG ammo?   The PIRANHA doesn't even need 2 tons of MG ammo.   I don't honestly care what you do w/ that extra ton, but ANYTHING would have been an improvement over a 2nd ton of MG ammo.    /boggle.   There really is no excuse for that one.   Its not sub-optimal, its just some designer intentionally being a jackass IMHO.
Honestly its the kind of thing that should have been errata'd the way they fixed the DHS issue on the Clint, Pixie-3M, Blackjack & Scorpion from 3050.

[The_Caveman]

AC-5s were always bad.  You basically never run out of crits building in 3025 and an AC/5 is 2 tons per damage (8 tons of gun, 1 ton of ammo, 1 ton of heatsink) while the PPC is 1.7 tons per damage and 10 is a more advantageous damage grouping because it will break armor on some light mechs and always gets a crit check on a head hit.  The LRM-10 is about 1.83 tons per damage (assuming 6 average damage, 4 heatsinks, and 2 tons of ammo) and the same weight in absolute terms.  The large laser is 1.625 tons per damage.  The AC-10 (with 2 tons ammo and 3 tons of heatsink) is 1.7 tons per point of damage.  If you have more than 1 heatsink available from your engine everything but the AC-5 benefits more. 

If you want to fight close to medium, the LL and AC-10 are just better.  If you want to fight far, LRMs are just better.  If you want to fight at exactly 6 hexes, PPCs are just better.  And on a vehicle AC-5s manage to get worse.  An AC-5 goes down to 1.8 damage per ton, still worse than the PPC, but the LRM-10 drops to 1.17 damage per ton and the AC-10 1.4 damage per ton. 

Before the introduction of the PPC, AC-10, large laser, and LRMs was also before the development of BAR 10 armor.  Against primitive armor a heavy rifle with 3 tons of ammo and 4 heatsinks (eg. on an ASF) is 1.67 tons per point of damage and on a non-heat-tracking vehicle it's 1.22 tons per damage. 

The use cases for AC-5s center around flak and precision ammo and one of these is rare and the other nonexistent in the SHS era.

Damage-per-ton doesn't really mean all that much. The outcome of BT games comes down to dice randomness far more often than a slight statistical disparity between units unless you make the fights utterly one-sided. Especially in 3025. A PPC may be 17% more efficient but that's basically within the margin of error for a lance-on-lance encounter.

The AC/5 is underpowered, but it isn't grossly so. Any difference that only shows up over large sample sizes is too minor to be trifled with in a game like BT where balance is essentially by gentleman's agreement.

I've lost plenty of matches, to all manner of absurd things, but never one that I could blame on an AC/5.

[The_Caveman]

I mean, the Whitworth isn't anybody's idea of a close assault boat at 4/6/4 & 40 tons.
So while I wouldn't do it, I can see where the concept of going to Artemis to improve Fire Support made some small sense.

Statistically, Artemis isn't worth its weight until you have something like 3 tons of ammo already, or you're considering using it to downsize an LRM-20 to an LRM-15.

Really the problem with Artemis though is that you have to have line-of-sight to use it. IMO missile support units should be doing as little direct fire as possible.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

An Artemis system that reduced the penalties of Indirect Fire would be fantastic.  But it would also eliminate the last thing that NARC has going for it.

[Greatclub]

An Artemis system that reduced the penalties of Indirect Fire would be fantastic.  But it would also eliminate the last thing that NARC has going for it.

You got that wrong. Eliminating indirect penalties isn't something Narc had going for it, it was something given to it long after the fact so it would have something going for it.

[The_Caveman]

I wish they'd made semi-guided LRMs able to lock on to Narc as though the target had been TAG'd. It'd make Narc actually worthwhile to use and I'd much rather eliminate the TMM than get a minor bonus on the missile table.

SGLRM might actually be too powerful as they have no hard counters (short of destroying the TAG-carrying unit). But damn, do I love them. No IDF or TMM penalties. They become my default ammo as soon as they're technologically available.

[Elmoth]

Well, I consider a 100% damage increase comparing an AC10 or PPC over an AC5 quite a change there, not some minor tweak :)
My main concern is aesthetics. I look at the thing on the shoulder of a Shadow Hawk. Then I think how a mirror fight would go when one of them scores a direct hit on the enemyu or 2 in the middle of the torso. the target should be disabled given the size of that thing. Then I look at the stats and it simply makes no sense. Rules make no sense.

Then I look at the rules ignoring the artwork. Rules STILL make no sense at all. Neither for the weapon itself nor the oversinked and undergunned mech design. The Shadow Hawk is just plain bad in all the fields except if you take aesthetics alone, where it rules. 

[Greatclub]

I wish they'd made semi-guided LRMs able to lock on to Narc as though the target had been TAG'd. It'd make Narc actually worthwhile to use and I'd much rather eliminate the TMM than get a minor bonus on the missile table.

SGLRM might actually be too powerful as they have no hard counters (short of destroying the TAG-carrying unit). But damn, do I love them. No IDF or TMM penalties. They become my default ammo as soon as they're technologically available.

One problem - if you look at the back of TM, you'll note that every unit with TAG adds 23 BPV (IIRC) to its value for every ton of SG-LRM in the force. That adds up fast in larger forces.

[Sartris]

As an FWL player I can vouch that it does indeed add up prohibitively fast. If you don’t play with bv, (much more accurate) bombs away!

[massey]

I think we're speaking past each other on some of this.

Certain mech designs are not optimal on the tabletop.  We all know that.  But that doesn't mean an inefficient design makes no sense.  I think that gets driven home when you look at other rule sets, or if you think about whatever in-universe justifications may exist.  To me, the "mech that makes no sense" has to be more than something inefficient -- it's got to be a total head-scratcher where you can't come up with any kind of explanation as to why they would do that.

The Goliath 3M is one of those where I'm at a loss as to why they'd give it an extra ton of machine gun ammo, but only have a single ton of gauss rifle ammo.  There are a few possibilities I see, none of them particularly good.  1)  Comstar got the stats reversed.  Oops.  2)  The design was meant as a testbed for the new weapon, and what we see in the TRO is more a "proof of concept" than anything else.  3)  Some problem popped up in the design process that they couldn't resolve.  Adding in an XL engine and a brand new gun might have done some odd things to the internal layout that they didn't anticipate.

Unless you don't expect to actually fight other mechs, I don't see why you'd consciously choose to allocate the ammo that way.  Now maybe the Goliath is used for anti-insurgency work, and it's supposed to stomp around shooting at everything that moves.  If you really only need the gauss to take out the occasional light tank, that might be enough.  A 15 point hit is enough to kill a Scorpion tank from the side in one shot.  So the 3M could function as a low intensity warfare specialist, where you don't really expect to see it take on Battle Value balanced opponents in any serious way.  It could also be good at assaulting an entrenched position, blasting apart a bunker or fortified wall as it approaches, and then standing there and gunning down large numbers of infantry.  Still, if that's the case I don't know why you'd bother to upgrade it over the PPC version.

[Kovax]

The SRM-4 OS on the Quickdraw has to be my pet peeve: 2.5 tons for something that will only get used ONCE in a battle, if at all, and won't do all much even in the event that it does hit.  For a half-ton more, they could have made it something useful, or else replaced it with a single SRM-2 and a ton of ammo and at least made it semi-useful, even though far from optimal.  Machineguns and a half-ton of ammo would have been an improvement, seriously.

[massey]

Well, I consider a 100% damage increase comparing an AC10 or PPC over an AC5 quite a change there, not some minor tweak :)
My main concern is aesthetics. I look at the thing on the shoulder of a Shadow Hawk. Then I think how a mirror fight would go when one of them scores a direct hit on the enemyu or 2 in the middle of the torso. the target should be disabled given the size of that thing. Then I look at the stats and it simply makes no sense. Rules make no sense.

Then I look at the rules ignoring the artwork. Rules STILL make no sense at all. Neither for the weapon itself nor the oversinked and undergunned mech design. The Shadow Hawk is just plain bad in all the fields except if you take aesthetics alone, where it rules.

The Shadow Hawk is a great mech, but it's not ultra efficient in the standard game rules.  It is flexible, however.

Classic Battletech works best with lance vs lance battles, on 2-4 mapsheets.  In one on one fights, the initiative system can be really streaky and luck plays a really big role.  With company vs company and higher, it gets really bogged down and takes forever to play.  There's a certain level of abstraction in Classic Battletech, and we need to keep in mind that it doesn't 100% represent how the mechs would actually work on the battlefield.  Just because a mech doesn't hit the exact right break points in normal Battletech, doesn't mean it isn't a good mech.

Solaris VII rules show us that mechs can be pushed beyond their Battletech limit.  You can jam down on those "fire" buttons and blaze away until your weapons melt down.  If that's a tactic people actually use in the Inner Sphere, then over-sinking a design can make sense.  It's just built with the knowledge that people don't pay attention to the manufacturer's suggested use.

Alpha Strike and Battleforce (and I'm going to show my ignorance here, because I've played neither) show the game world from a more removed perspective.  Marking off individual armor dots isn't as important, and neither is tracking heat or counting movement mods.  A mech that falls on the wrong side of a line in Battletech (like the Marauder that fires 2 PPCs and walks and gains 5 heat) no longer suffers from those same drawbacks.

--

Even in Classic Battletech, the Shadow Hawk seems pretty useful to me.  It's never going to be the star of the show, but it can always contribute.  It can carry just about every type of variant ammo.  Facing a lot of infantry?  Load your AC-5 with flechette rounds and your LRM-5 with fragmentation ammo.  Now you're mowing through platoons, even in cover.  The enemy has a lot of conventional fighters?  Flak ammo for your AC gives you some protection.  Need some mobile cover to launch your assault?  Smoke rounds for the LRM-5 can block line of sight.  Lots of vehicles swarming around?  Load that SRM-2 with inferno ammo and off you go.

In basic mech vs mech combat, the Shadow Hawk is not particularly impressive.  It doesn't suck, in fact it compares okay with the Griffin and the Wolverine.  But it's easy to see how you could make it more effective.  Where it really comes into its own is in the capabilities it would add to a military unit.  It really is a jack of all trades, master of none.

[The_Caveman]

Unless you don't expect to actually fight other mechs, I don't see why you'd consciously choose to allocate the ammo that way.  Now maybe the Goliath is used for anti-insurgency work, and it's supposed to stomp around shooting at everything that moves.  If you really only need the gauss to take out the occasional light tank, that might be enough.  A 15 point hit is enough to kill a Scorpion tank from the side in one shot.  So the 3M could function as a low intensity warfare specialist, where you don't really expect to see it take on Battle Value balanced opponents in any serious way.  It could also be good at assaulting an entrenched position, blasting apart a bunker or fortified wall as it approaches, and then standing there and gunning down large numbers of infantry.  Still, if that's the case I don't know why you'd bother to upgrade it over the PPC version.

That is exactly how the Crab Gunner, the Goliath's inspiration in Fang of the Sun Dougram, was used. Obsolete cannon fodder against other mecha but lethal against poorly-equipped insurgent forces.

The SRM-4 OS on the Quickdraw has to be my pet peeve: 2.5 tons for something that will only get used ONCE in a battle, if at all, and won't do all much even in the event that it does hit.  For a half-ton more, they could have made it something useful, or else replaced it with a single SRM-2 and a ton of ammo and at least made it semi-useful, even though far from optimal.  Machineguns and a half-ton of ammo would have been an improvement, seriously.

OS launchers have always been a cruel joke. Every design that carries one can easily find another half-ton for a single ammo bin. How hard would it have been to make OS launchers weigh, say, 1/5 of the self-loading versions? Light enough to give them some use but heavy enough to discourage carrying them exclusively.

Oh well, at least nowadays we have Rocket Launchers to retcon in place of the silly OS missile systems.

[massey]

I've always head-canoned the OS launchers as a crappy field refit of an existing missile launcher.  Like your mech suffered a critical hit to the SRM, and when you tried to repair it your tech screwed up his repair roll.  Or maybe you were missing some parts and the ammo feed is beyond repair.  The launcher itself still works, so you just leave it in there and load it up with one volley of missiles.

That's no excuse for the 3050 Quickdraw though, or any other mech that intentionally installs a one-shot weapon from the beginning.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I accept the OS SSRM-4 on the Daishi C: the mech is completely crit-packed and would have required extensive reworking for a different weapon.  But that's about it as far as mechs go.

By far the worst One Shot launchers go to the War Dog: there is absolutely no excuse for using two One Shots when you could have used two standard launchers and a ton of ammo for the same tonnage.  And speaking of the War Dog, it absolutely didn't need 5 tons of Gauss ammo.  An extra ton of armor or another laser would have been so much better.