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.
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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.