Ok scratch the turtle name.  The shield mech is now the parasol class and the tortuga is now a quadraped heavy.  Able to carry 1500u and hold up to 3 sparks not including the pilot.  The tortuga class also can also hold 3 unpacked light or EW bots for field deployment.  The tortuga, being very lightly armed, (typically one launcher or turret) is also equipped with an experimental fabricator.  This device allows the tortuga to quickly fabricate a number of small explosive homing mines.  Thes mines will track and hit  a single target until it is destroyed.  The fabrication process is not instant and the tortuga requires a few minutes to build up a suitable reserve of mines before deployment.  While the fabricator can fit on other mechs, its mostly useless without a large cargohold for fabrication and the toruga's bonuses.

As i was telling beastmodes last night, or whatever their name is, if i dont put it out there i'll forget the idea.  But yea i know devs are busy atm with more important things. 

Heres another idea:
"turtles":  heavy mechs that are extremly slow moving and project a large shield around themselves and anyone else that fits inside the radius.  Maybe a total of 4 - 6 bots or mechs not including the turtle itself.  Pels would maybe have the stongest but not necessarily the biggest.

SBCglobal in sunny San francisco

Tracing route to gameserverb.perpetuum-online.com [195.228.152.152]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  4    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  64.164.107.2
  5    11 ms    10 ms    11 ms  151.164.241.216
  6    11 ms    10 ms    10 ms  151.164.101.210
  7    12 ms    11 ms    12 ms  asn3356-level3.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.251
.246]
  8    16 ms    17 ms    22 ms  vlan79.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.18.126]
  9    13 ms    13 ms    17 ms  ae-74-74.ebr4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.134.245]

10    83 ms    83 ms    83 ms  ae-2-2.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.135.186]
11    83 ms    83 ms    82 ms  ae-6-6.ebr2.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.141.22]
12    82 ms    83 ms    83 ms  ae-1-100.ebr1.NewYork2.Level3.net [4.69.135.253]

13    85 ms    85 ms    85 ms  ae-3-3.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.89]

14   173 ms   173 ms   174 ms  ae-44-44.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.137.61
]
15   180 ms   180 ms   180 ms  ae-62-62.csw1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.18
]
16   173 ms   172 ms   172 ms  ae-61-61.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.140.1]

17   189 ms   190 ms   189 ms  ae-1-12.bar1.Budapest1.Level3.net [4.69.141.249]

18   189 ms   190 ms     *     ae-0-11.bar2.Budapest1.Level3.net [4.69.141.242]

19   192 ms   191 ms   192 ms  dialup-212.162.26.134.frankfurt1.mik.net [212.16
2.26.134]
20   223 ms   192 ms   192 ms  81.183.0.98
21   192 ms   192 ms   192 ms  81.183.0.43
22   193 ms   193 ms   192 ms  81.183.2.225
23   192 ms   193 ms   192 ms  84.2.225.113
24   192 ms   192 ms   192 ms  gameserverb.perpetuum-online.com [195.228.152.15
2]

Trace complete.

mine got caught up in budapest.  musta been all the foxy ladies...

the only thing i would amend to that is that you guys definitely had a range advantage that we couldn't take.  when it got down to the last fight we were slightly whittled down and instead of backing off, i feel like we should have just charged in so a lot more folks could get in firing range, we were all goin to go boom anyways so why not? 

I know for myself, i hardly got a shot off at all because the blobs didnt ever get that close.  regardless, hindsight is always 20/20 and I will say this, it was super fun and a great learning experience and it will be very interesting to see what happens in a month or two when the noobs, like myself that didnt find out about this game till after launch, have significantly more EP invested.

if this is true (and i totally made it up, but awesome idea though right?), then there are two ways to implement that i can see:

all missiles are aoe by their own nature and damage numbers are majorly tweaked or they require basic ballistics lvl of 6 or higher and are a specific type of missile.

how about when aoe and collateral damage comes, pel. bots get explosive missiles that do splash damage?  like how the chem missiles require basic ballistics 5 to equip, for explosive missiles set the prereq to 7.  of course actual damage numbers would be difficult to balance.  when read the blog this is literally the first thing i thought of..