Right, let's get a few things straight.
The Onyx in my hanger is mine. I have the ownership papers and despite what you say, the ink is not still wet on them. Feel free to prove otherwise, the Legion hasn't been able to.
Yes, as a pilot for the Heroes, I had the chance to run one of these before they came on the open market. Pat and Kenneth can go and sulk all they want because despite how much they whine or attempt to pull (nonexistent) rank, they don't get to play with my toys.
And no, this is not a Galaxy conquering mech... it was never designed to be.You see, we aren't the richest clan. We don't have the funds of the likes of Zeon or Fusion, nor are we as numerous as the AFF or Dragons. We get by.
To get by, sometimes you need to invest sensibly in mechs that can do as much as possible for as little outlay as you can get away with. We love mechs like the Oggun or the Ammonite that can be configured for any role you need. Just bear that in mind.
When we found out that new mounts were being developed to help in the Heg-Shogun Trade Wars, we had some very definite stipulations, a lot of them defined by the need to "get by".
If you can't afford to buy or equip BFM, you use something a little bit lighter in the hope you can shoot first because those things are slow. 85 Tons is still strong enough to exist in the line of battle and has access to a raft of gear that you will have picked up over the years. 90 tons might well seem better, but it's a royal pain trying to put anti trample defenses on that kind of platform.
Speaking of defense... love a shield. I may have said that before. Better than you get intrinsically on either the Dreadnought or the Torrent. In built trample shielding would have been nice, as would auto repair, but there's only so much you can put on any bare bones chassis. There is an extra hard-point though, making it the heaviest shielded of the 85 ton niode mechs.
Its not going to stop one of the 9 X supercharge shots favoured by the BFMs, but anything less you have a chance of walking away from... or alternatively not being there in the first place, because a good dodge is a good defense. Perhaps not as agile as the other 85 ton niode mechs, it still has an edge with the equipment available to its weight class compared with the big heavy boys.
The best defense of all however is a good fast offence, and our guys were rightly impressed with its speed. Not quite as good as the Dreadnought, the Onyx is at least in the same ballpark with its higher throw weight, and it is miles ahead of the Torrent or any BFM.
You see, we learned a while ago that the way to combat the Great Wall of Torrent, or the later Wall of Boreas was to use something fast and get of the first shot. Hopefully do something to stun them, and just keep hitting until they fall over. You may not kill them all, but you can break the line and the guys behind you can finish the job. We earned a whole of Dreadnoughts from constant silver medals, and they are absolutely brilliant for that job.
The Onyx slots right in there, especially when you take into account it's intrinsic abilities to slow or freeze. Add in the extras with a cockpit suite the same size as the torrent, and you can very easily give this a heck of a lot of (albeit temporary) stopping power. Well, apart from that intrinsic crit kill which can stop anything in its tracks.
Now you're probably under the impression that I'm going to keep going on about how brilliant the Onyx is and simply gloss over any downsides. That's not the way we roll.
Lets start off with that in built stopping power. Intrinsically the over charge capacitors from the engine suite can give you either X3 or X1.5, so a X4.5 overcharge shot is the best you are going to get. I wouldn't guarantee that's going to one shot an undamaged BFM (although it will hurt it..) so you really need to invest some add-ins that will fill in the missing X2 overcharge area.
The other big thing is the lack of dedicated damage to any particular weapon. Now this is both a curse and a blessing.
The downside is that you are going to end up hitting with less power than most other mechs. There's no getting away from that, even if you spend a small fortune on enhancements.
The plus side however is that you aren't shoe-horned into a particular weapon type or to completely discard a huge amount of bonuses by shoehorning the chassis into something it isn't and losing a lot of its power.
I've seen the ice and fire builds that our respective specialists have come up with, and they aren't bad at all. My own preference is along other lines, but to be honest I was really tempted to use it as a true stop gap.
You see, one thing I've noticed. While everyone always keeps up to date with the best weapons they cam, there's always a weapon type that is under used... you just don't have the chassis to fit them on, and you end up with a whole slew of high damage weapons that you have nowhere to place.
Now you do. It's a perfect stop-gap make-do chassis, not quite as good as specialised type but better than having nothing at all by a long stroke.
Think of it like this. You can have the most amazing meal, a total gastronomic delight. But right at the end, just to completely satisfy you, what you need is a slice of bread and butter to soak up the last of the gravy.
Here's the Onyx, an honest to goodness bread and butter mech.
Submitted by David McCallum : #701548