Playing Mechwarrior Online, I’m reminded of how dated and unbalanced some the elements of Battletech can be. One element that bugs me the most is the Autocannon/2.
Only dealing 2 damage for a weight of 6 tons... 6! that’s not including ammo. The Autocannon/20 which does 10 times more damage weighs in at 14 tons. Lets look at the numbers...
Weight
|
Damage
|
Damage per Ton
| |
6
|
2
|
0.333
| |
8
|
5
|
0.625
| |
12
|
10
|
0.833
| |
14
|
20
|
1.428
| |
0.5
|
2
|
4.000
| |
1
|
3
|
3.000
|
0.333 Damage a ton? How’s that a useful weapon? Yet a Machine Gun, that does the same damage, is 4 Damage a ton... hmm.
Solution, make the AC/2 3 tons, and 2 critical slots. At 3 tons it becomes 0.666 damage per ton, a little better than the AC/5. Now it’s a weapon you want to mount.
More, it’s a weapon than can be mounted on light mechs. When your mech weighs 20 to 25 tons total, having 6 tons for a weapon and 1 ton for ammo is pretty costly. Especially when you can mount 7 medium lasers for that weight, which would be 35 damage!
Mechwarror Online also saw the balance problems with the AC/2, and took their own spin on balancing the weapon. Since their game is in real time, they graced the AC/2 with a really fast fire rate. I personally find that this makes a great sighting cannon, when paired up with AC/10.
My proposed changes would work just as well with Mechwarrior Online’s fire rate balances.
Now for some more dramatic changes...
While on the topic of ACs versus laser balance issues: Sure there is the heat sinks verse ammo balance out design. That is something that makes battletech awesome -- not going to touch that.
But lasers have two things going for them. No ammo, so you can take risky shots all day long. The bigger advantage, pulse lasers. The most dangerous weapon in Battletech is the Large Pulse Laser. This monster can hit hard at 9 damage, especially for the heat, and gets a -2 to hit to the roll (thats a good thing, a really good thing).
The best that ACs can do is a -1 to hit with LB-X types... and thats with shotgun type ammo.
What’s needed are a couple of changes to make ACs have a tactical advantage over pulse lasers.
First change: it’s time that ACs get a chance to cause a critical hit when impacting on armor. This would only be for ACs, not machine guns. This would greatly justify the weight of ACs. But just this change alone would make Autocannon too powerful.
Since this would increase the number of critical hits in the game and a single critical knocks out a weapon. Large weapons like the AC/20 would be very vulnerable. So the only way this rule would work is if weapons are destroyed when they have 25% or more of their critical slots are damaged. Now large weapons can hold up, and you can deal random criticals to mechs.
First change: it’s time that ACs get a chance to cause a critical hit when impacting on armor. This would only be for ACs, not machine guns. This would greatly justify the weight of ACs. But just this change alone would make Autocannon too powerful.
Since this would increase the number of critical hits in the game and a single critical knocks out a weapon. Large weapons like the AC/20 would be very vulnerable. So the only way this rule would work is if weapons are destroyed when they have 25% or more of their critical slots are damaged. Now large weapons can hold up, and you can deal random criticals to mechs.
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