It's because mk2 assault and below are so easy to get and so much better they are the standard even for new people. This is why a syndicate robot with rough parity to mk2 would benefit new people - make it a bit more expensive f you want but the token cost requires that people are rewarded for playing the game with useful mechs and assaults.

Step 1 - make them useful.

Zoom If your prepared to listen to ways to make it a useful bot / race then make a thread and ask. Quite often it feels like these forums are a circle jerk between the same old faces but please don't miss this opportunity in the same way you did the balance patch. The first new bots and mechs for years have the potential to bring back some of the thirty thousand people who played before but only if they are useful. Your current plan will make all but a couple of them vanity bots that'll don't get used.

Because they would get used? Newbies are not as poor as you think, nor are they devoid of skill points any more. What a mk2 equivalent race available from the syndicate shop would do is enable solo and small gang players who don't have the industrial backbone a way of competing.

By all means add a mk2 version if you want to cater to both markets but making them worse than a mk1 assault is not going to make them desirable.

I did look at medium firearms on all assaults - remember that with those two extra low slots you have the ability to add a reactor and still have a low spare. Arbalast out damaged all, you get the same spread. From a speed perspective you still have the same demob problem.

There is no situation that a demob fitted assault will lose to a demob fitted locust.

As for the waspish, its not really comparable but considering it can two to three shot a locust while shield tanking all damage its really not worth the comparison.

Now in a solo level 5 mission you might have the difficult task of facing an arkhe. Its ***

I've said before that there should be an energy modifier to demobs so a small thing demobilizing a big thing would run out of energy quickly. Its so stupid that an unbonused light can demob a heavy with negligible drain.

Its a bit underwhelming so far, I think they are trying to balance vs the t1 variants which will doom them to uselessness.

They should follow the Eve model of making them awesome, too good and overused before nerfing them in to oblivion.

That's because you have no brain. The whole race is slow, the detection bonus makes it still usable.

If heavies had an evasion penalty it might matter more

its slower than something else but it also has a signal detection bonus. This means you have time to see them and then stay out of range unless they are full speed straight at you which is everything in signal detection.

lets be realistic, the only thing it will ever fit is a frame and a signal detector with perhaps a shield. Whats that comparison?

A long time ago you could go farming for minerals. It was possible to run Corp production just from recycled stuff and you would farm different stuff for different minerals. At this time one corp had complete control of beta and epriton and prices of good were high. I worked out you could recycle universal plates and get epriton based commodities cheaper than the market price and started flooding the market with goods.

This of course upset said corps who pushed for a nerf. Salvaging got hit hard with the nerf stick and became virtually useless. So much so that they had to introduce plasma.

Since then the mineral market has been dead and the module market equally so as people have more nic than minerals.

It was a bad change then and I fought it (and like all my other fights lost) and its still a bad change. The old recycling capped mineral prices, made alpha production for small corps viable and gave a lively mineral and module market. It also prevented the nic inflation problems plasma creates and created a valuable nic sink for repair - another good reason for station ownership.