Good evening,
#MechWarriorOnline folks! Patch day was this last Tuesday, and with it came a new booster pack, Icons 2! I gave my thoughts on the first Icons pack, so I figure for completion's sake, I'll give my thoughts on the second one. Icons 2, like Icons 1, is a pack of 4 ’Mechs, each one a notable ace custom that has appeared somewhere in the franchise in use by a named
#MechWarrior. The second Icons pack contains the Clan AS7-D-H Atlas II "Unity", Clan BLR-1Gbc BattleMaster "Red Corsair", Clan AWS-8Q Awesome "Smith", and Ebon Jaguar "Samantha". This is also the order in which I'm going to talk about them!
"Unity" is, of course, the personal Atlas II of Nicholas Kerensky, one of the founders of the Clans and the first ilKhan. Essentially a Clan translation of a regular Atlas II's armament – LB 10-X autocannon in the right arm, ER large lasers in the left arm, medium pulse and SRM-6 in the left torso, LRM-20 in the right torso, ferro fibrous armor and double heat sinks – Kerensky's Atlas II had an ECM suite, active probe, and a second SRM-6 launcher installed, and all the missiles were augmented with Artemis IV fire control systems. The Atlas II was essentially a Royal Regiments version of the original Atlas, interestingly designated as a completely separate chassis where other Royal Regiments ’Mechs would merely be considered a variant thereof. In a game where the MechLab doesn't exist, the AS7-D-H is certainly a strict upgrade over the AS7-D, and translating that to Clan technology certainly makes it even more powerful on top of that.
Because the Atlas II as a chassis is functionally too similar to existing Atlas variants in spite of where their hardpoint locations differ, it is extremely likely that "Unity" will be the only version of the AS7-D-H or any other Atlas II that MechWarrior Online will ever have; it is unique for being built entirely with Clan tech, which as far as MWO is concerned, is excellent grounds for choosing that over an Inner Sphere Atlas II all by itself. The only other options, aside from them just making something up as HBSTech once did, are mixed tech variants, and it appears MWO is not ready to make that happen.
You may or may not have noticed that aside from the head, it looks like a regular Atlas. Apparently the developer in charge of working on new chassis and variants for this game was not terribly happy with how the Atlas II looks in tabletop, and the Hired Steel design that
#MechWarrior5Mercenaries received as of Shadow of Kerensky was not workable in MWO. So he just changed the Atlas's head, added ballistic hardpoint geometry to a place it hadn't existed before on this chassis, and called it a day. For a ’Mech there will probably only ever be the one variant of for the foreseeable future, I'd argue that's fair enough.
Taking it into games, however, I'm having a lot of fun with it! Like most ’Mechs, I run it stock, and while I've been spoiled by the Naga and its Arrow IV launchers the last few weeks, I still did fairly alright with this thing. Your mileage may vary; I'm actually rather curious how well it does on an optimized build!
Another curiosity I have is how well a stock Unity will fare against my AS7-D-HT – which is in reality a refit AS7-D, of course – but I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the game who even plays with either ’Mech this way, so that may be the realm of theorycrafting for now.
#BattleTech #BattleMech #VideoGames
