You could add that Ultra's are permanently jammed on a roll of 2 to hit so the rotary still shows an advance with the ability to always clear jams.
Err.... what are you suggesting then? That's exactly how it works right now.
If that's not a big enough handicap, add that on a 2 to hit roll followed by rolling an 8+ 2 rounds detonate in the cannon, destroying the cannon, dealing 10 points internal damage (with the requisite chance for additional crits) and dealing 1 point of feedback damage to the mechwarrior. Rotaries are still superior to Ultra's but ultra's aren't so dumb and to cripple themselves so often.
Ultra's fixed.
Now I'm really confused. Your suggestion for "fixing" the UAC is to change the failure mode from jamming itself to uselessness to a failure mode of catastrophic weapon destruction + internal damage + pilot injury? Is the UAC too good?
Generally I think house-rule fixes should lean on the simpler side, but anyways that little tangent should probably be in the designs portion of the forum rather than here.
I figure that if one likes the base Wolverine, like i do, then one likes the Wolverine II. It is a no nonsense upgrade.
I'm one who likes the base Wolverine (though I
really like the variants with the Large Laser) but don't care for the upgrade.
The UAC/5 is a decent, small upgrade to the original 6R model. But to use it to its full potential requires rapid-firing which also risks jamming, not great. Otherwise it's a heavier AC/5 with slightly more favorable range brackets. I'd *almost* prefer a regular AC/5 with special ammo at that point.
The SRM-6 pack gets Artemis IV. It's a small, marginal upgrade, but only if you load the right ammo, else it's effectively dead weight. On the Energy Wolverines (6K, 6M) I liked to fill the missiles with specialty ammo like infernos & fragmentations, and use the lasers for everyday fighting, but you can't really do that for the AC/5 boats. In this case, I'd have much rather had either more missile tubes, or streak tubes instead.
The MPL is okay, strictly speaking it's better than a single ML at ranges 6 and lower. But at that weight you can get 2 medium lasers, which would be significantly better than the MPL in general, and you could get that by re-arranging the equipment, consolidating the ammo, and losing one of the CASEs.
Basically the Wolverine II is a better Wolverine, but considering it's being built on an endo-steel frame with ferro-fibrous armor and other fancy doo-dads I was hoping for something more than what's essentially a marginal enhancement.