Topic: The Kain needs some love.
So I've been driving, and losing, the Kain for a while now, but I've recently started shifting EP into another race because the Kain is fundamentally the weakest of the three available tier 1 mechs. It desperately needs some love to balance it.
Here are my main issues:
1) the Kain's bonuses suggest that it should be a back-of-the-pack bot, sniping from distance and retreating to cover to repair any damage. With a falloff bonus and med EM guns, it should be able to outrange same-skill med HCLs, albeit with the reduced damage you'll get in falloff. At my current skill level, falloff on a T1 medium EM gun is 107m. With only Improved Falloff skill affecting it, med HCL, falloff is 112m, and in fact the HCL has higher base optimal and falloff than the equivalent magnetic weapon.
2) The armour repair bonus is useless in both PvE and PvP. The Kain has the lowest base HP of the three mechs and isn't able to run a shield effectively, nor does it have the Artemis' resistence bonuses. In any fight, it's going to have the lowest effective HP of any mech on the field, and the medium armour repairer is so woefully inefficient in terms of accu used to HP repaired (1.83:1 base on a T1 repper and my current skills, 1.35:1 when fitted on a Kain, whereas a small repper has a 1.083:1 base). Even fitting two med plates and two universal hardeners, which does bring EHP up considerably wont give the Kain anywhere near the EHP levels of a single-plated Artemis with 1 universal hardener. This would also negates the Kain's nominal speed advantage over the other two mechs. - coupled with its shorter range, it'd be useless for anything other than static battles where no one moves.
The Kain doesn't have a defined role. The Tyrannos is effective because it has a dual layer tank, can shoot over the scenery you're hiding behind, and because it can be used as an energy warfare platform. The Artemis has the best overall tank of the three, has a longer range than the Kain and does more damage than the Tyr. The Kain turns up and dies, because everyone else is driving Artemis' and are hitting it hard in the resistance hole.
What I would like to see is something like this:
1) Swap the damage characteristics of the Gauss and EM guns, giving the gauss guns the higher damage bonus. As gauss guns are the lighter of the two, this will increase overall speed and allow Kain pilots to close range more quickly, somewhat negating the lower overall range
2) Change the armour repairer amount bonus to an armour repairer accumulator bonus, and increase base HP by 500-750. The Tyrannos can run a dual tank, and the Artemis has higher resists, so the Kain should have most base armour HP.
3) ????
4) Happier Kain pilots
OR
1) Change the increased falloff bonus to increased optimal, without changing damage, and increase the base range of magnetic weapons to give the Kain the ability to snipe at distance and retreat out of enemy lock range to repair.
Obviously all of the above is affected by my relatively low overall EP (~130K on this character) - I've dumped what I hope is the relevant info below for anyone who is interested - but even with increased EP, the differences between the mechs would only become greater.
Ready for this to be shot down in flames now
(improved falloff 4/sharpshooting 5/advanced robotics 6/nuimquol robot control 5/thelodica robot control 5)