I was paging through 3058U and ran across this passage:
For two centuries, the Supernova remained the same; however, the Nova Cat Touman needed ’Mechs requiring less resources to build and maintain. This task required the efforts from four of the Nova Cat castes. The designers made one fundamental change to the assault ’Mech, not counting weapon load outs and nearly maximized armor protection: the use of endo steel.
And that left me a bit mystified. The
Supernova uses standard structure, engine, and gyro. It does use double heat sinks (which if one gives credence to ER: 2750, these upgraded heat sinks require an orbital endo steel facility to manufacture). However, the primary model uses nothing else but jump jets and ER large lasers, a type of weapon specifically noted that the resource starved Blood Spirits focused on using (due to their lower resource cost compared to autocannons and particle cannons). So what exactly is saving resources? The newer variants require an orbital endo steel facility (something that may already have been required for the double heat sinks), but endo steel is definitely more resource intensive to replace and repair. It also precludes the ability to make the new variants as field refits. Additionally, the new variants definitely require more resources by using ATMs, targeting computers, and and PPCs. So how exactly do these new variants save on resources?
The topic isn't specifically for this 'Mech, but I just thought it was a topic worth discussing. I'm sure there are other examples out there as well. This just happened to be the first one I noticed recently. Anybody else have other ones?
