Right, let's see how many of you have been paying attention.
Think of it like an exam... by now you should be able to look at any piece of kit and work out if its a good'un or not.
We'll start you off with a nice easy one, the new 100 ton engine, the Meson Drive.
Let's look at the book listings. 58 Niodes, 1535 Bioptics and 2174 Ferrite gets you an engine module
only usable in the biggest brutes, giving them 8 speed, a missile boost of 6% on to damage along with one of 3% on projectiles.
What boxes does it tick?
Negatives are non existent. For the BFM class, that is always a huge draw card. Engine wise, that makes it in the same league as Gigabot Swarms, Orbit Cores, Zentron Thrusters for Niode equipment and Kinetic Converters or Power Niodes in Crystal kit.
Thing is a Gigabot Swarm is specialist repair gear so isn't really an equal. Orbits and Zentrons are more like it, but of all three they each seem skewed towards particular weapon types and therefore have a bias towards a particular chassis or two. The speed of 8 on the Meson does however put it at the top end of whizziness on the engine stakes at this weight though.
The thing is it needs it, because by now you should have worked out that this thing is screaming to be put on a Potatotron or Rumbaba and both seriously require the boost because those missile weapons are so slow.
So concentrating purely on missile mechs, a Ballistic Amplifier is not a bad bet if you are on a budget. Its probably the closest piece you will get that is directly comparable to the Meson, but al bonuses are a little lower and it has that annoying laser vulnerability.
The only other missile enhancer is a Spark Core, a fraction slower, a little better damage boost, projectile boost has been replaced with some Fork, but a big hit against incoming projectiles. 6 less niodes in cost though.
So yes, for a missile mech the Meson is definitely the best choice. In practice though, those chassis have 7 or 8 slots to fill, and the extra cost stacks up to almost another equipment piece.You may find yourself mixing and matching all three pieces (and maybe even adding the odd Power Node) just to balance cost, power and penalties.
Such is the life of the owner of a 100 tonner.
Submitted by David McCallum #701548