Ah, an assault mech worthy of the name. There is a large jump in firepower from the
Awesome to this mech. Mostly, that's to the strength of this design, but this is
also the first time we have seen a weight class skipped (eighty-five tons). Battlemech
weight classes increase in increments of five, and every class from thirty tons upwards
had been represented to this point. The only other weight class skipped in the game
is ninety-five. That's a shame, considering that no fewer than eight weight classes have
two representatives here. Any expansion pack for MechWarrior 4 would do well to fill in
these top-of-the-spectrum gaps. Big mechs are good mechs, after all. The Mad Cat MkII sports the best available-tonnage-to-weight ratio
of any mech in the game; 79.44% of the mech's total weight is available for manipulation.
That's a whopping 71.5 tons for weapons, armor, components, heat sinks, and extra engine
juice. The ten-tons-heavier Atlas has only half a ton more (but that mech also has a
creepy looking skull head - beat that). The twenty weapons slots tie the Atlas for
second place overall. This is also the largest mech to have the option of including jump
jets, which allows it to excel at hiding behind some terrain and snipe (say, with a gauss)
while jumping straight up. Its minimum speed is not good, but it has the highest
maximum of any assault mech, so the speed is there if you're willing to ante up the
points. Acceleration and deceleration, however, are not there. Assault-mech-awful values
are present for each.
The weapons slots on the Mad Cat MkII are spread out fairly
evenly: two beam (one group of two), eight ballistic (two groups of three, one group of
two), six missile (two groups of three), and four omni (two groups of two). Ballistic
comes in first, followed by missile. Up two four heavy-duty weapons are possible, and a
respectable beam weapon configuration may be achieved by utilizing the omni slots to mount
three bombast or large lasers. Try outfitting the mech with dual LBX-20ACs and dual
MRM40s. That's 112 points of damage per salvo (if you can manage to hit anything with that
loadout).
For some reason, I'm not too keen on this mech's
appearance. I'm okay with the looks of the original Mad Cat (nothing special, but I
respect it as a seminal BattleTech image), but this big brother is stockier, and seeing
one approaching gives me the feeling of being attacked by three cardboard boxes stacked on
a pair of legs.
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Awesome
