Oooh, presents! Love a present!
And the good thing about presents is that sometimes you get something that you really like that you would just never buy for yourself.
Take this Double Booster that somebody left at mine while they were in a drunken stupor at New Year. Sometimes it pays to invite the Bunnies over, always good for a giggle. And some free stuff.
Now, if I'd bought it, I would have paid 208 Ferrite, 191 Bioptics and 11 Niodes for an engine piecethat serves well on up to 25 tone chassis with a speed rating of 23 and gives a 4% chance at a fork
shot.
In essence, it's a simple lightweight piston design in a tried and trusted V-twin configuration. Easy to build, easy to maintain and that slight lateral vibration gives the chance of your shot raking off to the the sides.
Compared to anything around it, it's a faster engine than anything that doesn't top out at the 25 ton mark, even without any bonuses to other attributes. For the Ant brigades, it is actually the slowest of the engines on offer; The Block Charge (which doesn't even cost any crystal) is still the fastest and cheapest thing on the market.
The only other engine on offer is the Cogwerk Micro Block, and it is this that you need to make a comparison with. Costs are around the same. The Cogwerk gives 25 speed and an auto repair of 1, the Booster gives 23 speed and 4% fork.
Swings and roundabouts some may say.
The thing is, as soon as somebody starts asking for niode payment, you need to make sure you are getting value for money, and a piece that will keep its value over time. AR 1 does not hold value. At the top level, a Red Ant fight, or 20 ton specialists for that matter, consist of who can shoot first and making sure you can one-shot your opponent. There's a good reason why we consider the lighter ton specialists to be... not right in the head.
Don't get me wrong. I've served my time in Red Ants. Won a gold piloting them in the first Specialist War. But that was back before Red Ants were sexy again. I take my hat off to those mad sods who strap themselves into light mechs as specialists war after war.
But I digress, because the point is that AR of any sort is useless when you are facing a fight in which if you are hit then your are dead.
So even dropping 2 points of speed, 4% fork is going to give you something that will provide a useful investment.
But you know what? For what for me was a freebie, the best place to put this on is another freebie. Iv'e got a Novum that's been looking for a decent secondary engine for a while... a Scrub Grub is nice in the primary slot, but I think I could well be replacing the Radium Engine with this puppy.
Submited by David McCallum #701548