And what, pray tell, is monstrous about a Firestarter with medium pulse lasers?
The same thing that's wrong with literally everything else that can generate a +4 TMM, avoid airborne unit rules, take advantage of terrain (read: Heavy Woods) and carry pulse lasers at the same time. It breaks the RNG curve. It's the
exact same argument people use against the old superjumping LAM rules. If it's valid then, it's valid now. Note that I don't actually have a PROBLEM with units that can do that - I'm simply pointing out the factual reason why FASA got rid of the superjump rules.
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Anyway, here's my point-by-point thoughts on this now that I've had some time to think:
-Monthly maintenance on a LAM is $15,000 CB/month.Honestly, this isn't that bad, if it weren't for the current maintenance rules for every other unit type. Maintenance costs are retardedly low as it is; $300/month for a Mech is a rounding error given the sums a merc unit deals with. If Mech Maintenance costs were $3,000/month, and LAMs were $15,000/month, that would totally make sense. As-is, I'm considering changing it to $5,000/month, which is at least enough of a cost you have to NOTICE.
-All location replacement costs are tripled. This has no effect on the Sell Value of the LAM.Don't actually have a huge issue with this; the transform-y bits should be expensive. No effect on the Sell Value is still horseshit, but I'll deal with that later.
-Cockpit, Avionics, Sensor, and Life Support costs are doubled. This has no effect on the Sell Value of the LAM.Again, also not a huge problem. You're duplicating the functionality of an ASF and a Mech at the same time; double the price for double the function seems reasonable. Same comment re: Sell Value.
-LAM Actuators (not including Foot and Hands) are also part of the conversion process, and therefore cannot be purchased and must be hand-made. Each hand-made component requires a Tech to do nothing else for 2 weeks and make a Tech Roll at a +2 penalty (with location bonuses), and costs the same as a limb replacement. If you fail the Tech roll, that money is lost.Post-3052, this is actually reasonable, as the only production facility in the IS has been destroyed. For it to be true at all times is dumb. I wouldn't allow pre-stockpiling handmade parts from a purely gameplay perspective, anyway. My take on this is "LAM Actuators cost triple the standard amount, and have a +2 availability modifier. This modifier becomes a +4 after 3055 once stocks have run low."
-Pilots require Gunnery and Piloting skills for both BattleMech and AeroSpace Fighter unit types. These pilots are physically impossible to generate using standard AtB generation rules, which means pilots must start off as either AeroSpace or MechWarriors and use XP to train up the other skills (an untrained person has a score of 7/7).Pilots SHOULD require both ASF and Mech G/P scores. It's simply a failure of programming that you can't generate these otherwise. I'd put this as "if you want to hire a LAM pilot, ask the GM and he'll generate something. LAM pilots get paid as an ASF pilot AND a Mech pilot with approrpiate skill levels".
-Customizations or refits (ie, any Tech rolls which aren't repairs) involving LAMs have an inherent +5 penalty, regardless of the Class of customization / -Repairs to a LAM have an inherent +2 penaltyThese are both pretty ridiculous. That effectively makes all custom work impossible, when we have canon field refits of the things. I'd adjust the modifiers to +3 and +1, respectively.
-Refueling your LAM is required after each mission, whether you used the fuel or not, requiring $2,000 CBI get the thought process behind this. You don't leave military aircraft fueled during downtime. You drain the fuel, thus requiring refueling. Where this gets idiotic is the Campaign Companion cost for ASF fuel is something like "5 tons gas = $1,000 CB", and a LAM only carries 1 ton of onboard fuel. I agree with Jon and would simply ignore this and roll it into monthly maintenance costs, or fiat it and say that "LAMs always require $1,000 CB of fuel/month no matter what; add this to the $5,000 CB revised maintenance cost."
-Each month, roll 2d6. On an 8+, a random actuator fails and must be replaced. A hip or shoulder actuator failure requires replacement of the entire limb's internal structure, as per a standard hip or shoulder actuator critical hit.Yeah, I'm sorry, but no. None of this is OK. No part of this should be allowed, it's totally opposed to both every bit of fluff about Mechs and the existing fluff about LAMs (such as flying one out of a stockpile where it'd been sitting for a decade on Pacifica in Crescent Hawks Inception). Yes, LAMs can be somewhat unreliable. This goes beyond that, especially when combined with the "triple-cost" shit and "must rebuild actuator from scratch" rules. IMO, this should be scrapped entirely. LAMs can still be classified as hangar queens because their spare parts are hard to come by and repairs on them are harder, resulting in greater failure chances and thus more downtime.
Finally, regarding Sell Value, my druthers here is to flat triple the buying price AND selling price of all LAMs. That is, if a Stinger LAM normally costs $2million to buy, it now costs $6million and sells for half of THAT price (ie, $3million). This makes up somewhat for the inflated part values, and probably more accurately represents their rarity.
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Topic: Land-Air-Mechs in campaign play (Read 1783 times)