I'm not sure I 100% agree with this point. Sure, part way down the dial you're stats will be reduced but if you still have your se's your mech might not be 100% useless. for example, if your mech had a 2 armour piercing it could still damage a mech with hardened armour (wether by fluke or by part of a formation) instead of being totally useless (or trying the charge which you can't do in formation and will also deal you damage).

Which is why I have a feeling that the armor SEs (Hardened, Heavy, Reactive, and Reflective) are not going to be included in the gear cards. They'll probably be those few SEs that are pre-printed on the dial itself. So if, for example, you had a Templar in the new set, you'd have gear cards that could add pulse or armor piercing or whatever, but the heavy or hardened armor would be limited to the 5 or 6 clicks that WK printed. (This is a guess, I don't know if they're going to have a Templar in the new set.)

Well, gear's pretty much exactly the same as relics from Mk. Nothing really new there.

I am worried this may make the individual units have less personality. But we will see.

I could see Reactive or Reflective lasting the length of a mechs dial since they're pretty easy to bypass, but I agree on Heavy and Hardened.

*imagines a mech like Jacyn Bell or Bounty Hunter with Hardened Armor...* Eek! ;)

Have a good one!
Cap'n Jay

I thought this my self ... until i saw the AoD baner berak down thread. one of the images in the banner strongly appears to be a punch out from a reactive armor gear card... there goes the neighbor hood.

I thought of other ways they could do armor gear with out having it last right till salvage. the 2 ideas I came up with are ... the gear only works till you hit a repair marker (yeah... the BR guys are gonna love that!) or the defense stat on the dial could be printed in a hollow box (or circle) to indicate which clicks are eligible to get defense SE's from gear, ie clicks with out the box around the defense value dont work with the gear.

Neither of those ideas seems likely so, I dont know ... maybe armor will last the whole dial. But there is "evidece" that sugests armor will be available as gear for mechs.

The Vede has gray armor down the whole dial (even on some of his salvage clicks) so there is some precedent for a "fully armored" mech. Granted, He is not a top tier unit ATM, and his rank is "green" so Liao's ruthlesness cancels out the benefit - IF you are playing Liao.

Maybe the hard/heavy armor gear will read like this:

"Heavy armor - As long as this unit is not in salvage, reduce by 1 any damage applied to this unit from ranged or close combat attacks, and treat this units defense value as though it were 1 less."

"Hardened armor - As long as this unit is not in salvage, reduce by 2 any damage applied to this unit from ranged or close combat attacks, and treat this units defense value as though it were 2 less."

So the mechs with "Gear" armor (as opposed to "natural" armor) get a mixed benefit, being easier to hit but harder to damage, perhaps thus limiting broken combinations. This makes a limited amount of sense if you consider some of the CBT rules for hardened armor (it affects your speed/manouverability(sp?), which in turn, affects the modifiers on to hit roll's against you).

It's just guess, after wild guess, with me today. :)

I never thought of that, but it would make sense. It fits right in with the design of newer hardened armor units like the HL Longbow and SH Vulture, who have hardened but a crippling low defense value to go with it. Good catch.

Have a good one!
Cap'n Jay

Armor SE's through the dial possibly wouldn't be so bad when you remember that AP gear would also last through the dial. 17 or 18 defence with hardened armor doesn't mean squat against an AP attack.

If they do include armor gear I would assume AP gear would become standard until everyone stopped bothering to bring the armor gear and eventually the pendulum would swing back and even out.

Even small amounts of heavy and/or hardened armor cost a fair number of points... to pay for an entire dial of it would most likely be very expensive. I'm thinking that for a Heavy, where the defenses are generally in the 21-22 range, a hardened armor gear card would probably cost more than 100 points (possibly significantly more).

The sheer expense of any armor gear would probably reduce the frequency of its use.

Could more likely see Armour reducing a unit's speed value.

Lots of 'Mechs lose their damage value on one of their weapons systems about half to three quarters of the way down the dial, though.

In fact it's rare for a 'Mech to keep a damage value on both of its weapons systems all the way down to salvage.

So if you put gear on a weapons system that drops to 0 damage before salvage, you're wasting points on most gear at that point. The only SEs that are exceptions to this are melee SEs (Agility, Brawling, HTH Weapon), Point Defense, and Grapple.

Then of course when you put gear on a 'Mech with salvage clicks you're still paying for it on those salvage clicks even though you can't use it.

-= Lunatic

What I want to know is, can one only add a ballistic SE like AP to an already existing ballistic damage value OR does adding the gear MAKE the damage value ballistic OR if a ballistic gear can be added to an energy damage value can the player chose to use EITHER damage type?

@Lunatic

If the weapon system goes down to 0 way before salvage and it's a waste of points then don't use the gear card on that SE.

@Narcissus

They mentioned that the gear has requirements (eg. the armour piercing gear has ballistic requirements so the mech must at least have a ballistic attack). And since the gear can go on the primary or seconday weapon slot it will HAVE to on the appropriate slot.

(I thought that much was obvious, are you just tyring to cause trouble?)