Rob: How does the Dual Cockpit system work? I looked in Battlemech Manual & Total Warfare. They had no entries. Looking at TacOps, it references them in the Command Console block, but no stats. Sarna notes they require the two neurohelmets to be synced and requires a separate skill to be trained. Toying with the idea of trying to pick it up, but it would require selling more of my mechs than I'd planned to and I'd want to understand what exactly the benefits are.
Thanks.
Um. That's a good question. It's evidently been de-canonized, but the Mechs which mount it as a refit are not. I'm not sure how the hell that's supposed to work.
Old rules were:
-#3 Cockpit slot houses the Pilot
-#4 critical slot in the head houses the Gunner (no longer an empty slot)
-Use the Pilot's piloting skill. Use the Gunner's gunnery skill.
-Mech now requires 30 points of damage required to force a PSR (other modifiers remain the same).
-Attacker Movement Modifiers are reduced by 1. (no penalty for Walking MP, etc)
-Defender Movement Modifier for this Mech is increased by 1. (Move 3 hexes, get a +2 TMM).
-No secondary targeting penalties apply to this unit.
-Pilot damage from head hits/heat/etc apply equally to both Pilot and Gunner (it's not split)
-You have to set up a Pilot/Gunner as a dedicated team (requires fighting in 2 scenarios and a cost of 10 XP per person). Until that team is established, none of the above bonuses apply and both the pilot and gunner suffer a +1 penalty to their skill ratings (3 gunner becomes a 4). Swapping in a new Pilot or Gunner requires the same procedure as setting up the team in the first place.
-If the Pilot or Gunner is incapacitated, use the G/P skills of the non-incapacitated team member. All of the above bonuses are lost until that team member is no longer incapacitated.
Dual Cockpits are Advanced-level Tech, cost 200,000, weigh 4 tons and require the #4 critical slot in the head.