@russ_bullock: New Assault Mech in March

Any speculation/desires? I'm just looking forward to having another mech to kill on the battlefield

 

My speculation:

Zeus
Cyclops
Emperor
Banshee
Gladiator
King Crab (OP!!!)

 

official forums are converging on the Mauler being the best guess. Of course, they were all wrong about the Firestarter...

 

I don't think it would be the Mauler. Look at the Variants at sarna.net. None of them really can be completely realised with the current weaponsystem in MWO. Besides the 1R sucks with Quad AC2 and Ghostheat @11 DHS..

I believe best chances does the Zeus have. Cyclops also

 

Well, let's consider what we have:
Atlas, Awesome, Battlemaster, Highlander, Stalker, and Victor.

Unlike the light 'Mechs, Assault 'Mechs have less of a "This 'Mech is representative of this Faction." I suspect because they are a much smaller subset of any one House. (Roughly about 20% of a House's Mech force is Assaults. Higher for Steiner, lower for Marik.) Which makes it a little more difficult to place, given my theory that they want to have a somewhat balanced chassis list for the factions for CW. (Which worked out for lights.)

So my top three choices, given the lack of this, are - in order:
Banshee, Zeus, Cyclops.

Looking at Blagg's list, I doubt we'll see the Gladiator as I suspect Blagg is referring to the Clan Mech. We've been told multiple times that due to the split-criticals, the King Crab is not going to happen. The Emperor, being a former Star League 'Mech, is a remote possibility. After all, the Highlander, Kintaro, and Flea (Theoretically will be added...) are all former Star League 'Mechs.

Also, Charger is missing from this list. (Though, much like the Urbanmech, some would say it *isn't* missing...)

Now, why I think that order?

Banshee and Zeus are both iconic Steiner Mechs. The Banshee, over the Zeus, provides something we don't have yet - a 95 ton 'Mech. (Which are rare overall...) The Cyclops is third on the list mostly for being more likely than the others, but also because it is a remotely iconic Liao mech.

So my C-Bills are on the Banshee first, but the Zeus being a close contender. Though, one could take a moment to consider which of those is more likely to affect the Meta.

 

The Assault I've wanted to see for the longest time (within a reasonable MWO calender) is the Gunslinger! A ballistic on each arm w/ energy backup in an 85t mech?? YES PLEASE! Even if it can't mount dual AC/20s, the dual AC/10 or dual Gauss would be EEEPPPPPPIIIIICCCCC!! Oh, and, did I mention Jump Jets? It'd be a Super Victor! Also, it wouldn't be game crushingly OP since it wouldn't have arm mounted energy. The Victor can do triple AC/2s or dual AC/5s in on arm and dual PPCs or dual LLas on the other. With torso mounted energy hardpoints, the Gunslinger would have more of it's firepower on non-actuated points, only allowing the Ballistics to have the agility advantages.

I would LOVE to see that monster added to the game. Not overpowering, but, offering something that we don't already have! Too many mechs are either nullifying current mechs or are simply copies of what is already available.

Chatt.

 

3053 though...

 

Yeap, I've been saying that the Banshee is the most likely since they need to fill that 95 ton slot.

Regarding the Charger, though, the CGR-SB is a really good mech, and even with STD Heat sinks, would probably be one of the few stock mechs that would actually be decent enough to run. The rest of the variants, though, are probably the worst stock loadouts in existence.

 

well i think it is the banshee to fill the 95 ton mech so every ton slot is covered in MWO with atleast 1 mech(atleast the normal tonnages).
Speaking against that argument is the fact that pgi seems to not make that to be a factor to decide which is the next mech. I mean look at the distribution of mechs in tonnages especially in the medium class: 40ton-mech;45ton-1mech;50-3mechs;55ton-!4!mechs, that isn't realy a balanced distibution.
So it could be nearly every assault mech exsisting in 3051, but in that view i would hope for the hatamoto-chi, because it's a Kurita mech, has tons of variant and a fucking samurai out of 80tons of steel is just looking awesome, which additional could make room for a cool hero (that is atleast a special point for PGIs view i think hear.

 

Believe me, you don't really want a Banshee. It maybe looks great from the design (somehow like a slighter Atlas) and would fill the 95t Gap. But c'mon you really want something like a Boar's Head again? A single Ballistic plus some Energy Hardpoints and max. 1x Missile? Besides 1 of the Energy Hardpoints is located in the Head. Wow, can Zombie!




Give me an Assault Mech with at least 2 Ballistic Hardpoints! Just like the Victor or Highlander.

 

*hopes for Zeus*

 

See, I don't quite understand the 'inability' to have the King Crab- it has an AC/20 in each arm, right? There's enough crit spaces in an arm to have an AC/20 with shoulder and elbow actuators- you just don't get hands. And the King Crab doesn't have hands. It has pincers, which, barring melee combat, would be nothing more than 'missile doors' in function and probably not even that (though a non-fluff variant with missile hands would be kinda neat).

So what's the big problem here?

 

And what about the devastator?
We have just one 100t mech so far and the production year of the final version is 3048...

2 ballistics and 6 energy - though not many variants.
the original has 2Gauss, 2 PPC and 4ML

 

I'm tipping the Banshee to fill the 95 ton slot and would probably be similar to the Battlemaster in role.

After looking at Sarna, there are plenty of variants and custom configurations and they can always add hardpoints in multiples if necessary (think Griffin 1N) to balance. The 3S variant has lots of energy hardpoints already.

The Devastator, Mauler or any of the others mentioned would be pretty cool although they will be hesitant to add an assault with ballistics in multiple locations.

 

The biggest problem is the number of variants of the chassis. If you check out the Sarna.net Kincrab page, there is only 1 unique variant available in 3051 (The KGC-000B and KGC-0000 are basically just minor revisions to the original KGC-000 and all have exactly the same hardpoints). If we're being generous we could say that the KGC-001 was likely prototyped by this point, but that's still just 2 unique variants, and we need 3 canon variants to fit into the MWO leveling systems.

 

I've always been a big fan of the Zeus (at least from the canonical point of view). But given what we have in the 80 ton range, i doubt it will be the mech we will get. More likely, a Cyclops. The reasoning is simple, Cyclops is a command mech and they might make an ECM model. As is, we have 4 light ( Cicada included) mechs with ECM and only one assault. So this will help balance things out.