^Aye. Even Ketaro has super robot levels for his nanoarmor, iirc. The arcane pilot was probably the strongest pilot caster. Didn't really check the new psionic ones.
Nah, it's like a Healer vs Warblade debate. One of them anyone can build something far more effective 99% of the time but the other one in the hands of a highly skilled optimizer using an array of PrCs, Feats, & Items can produce a result that can cast Wish. We just happen to be played in a forum known as "minmaxboards", in a intended to be optimized game, using gestated rules.
Aye. I did mention that unlike their campaign, ours is gestalted. The campaign setting is intended to be used on gestalt, still.
Mysterious Power is still absurdly overpriced even if NM became useful, too.
Compared to what? Consider their worth in Battery upgrades.
Yeah, they are not the only ones through.
Like at level 7, a Super that blew almost half his upgrade points on Energy gets a 100 base, +50 from the Battery Upgrade, and can take Mysterious Power three times for +45/rnd. A 7th level Real on the other hand can select the WeissWriter for a base of 130 energy which gets four Hardpoints, investing half of those into energy he picks Fission System for 20% energy regen and Long Cape to reduce all energy costs by 20% which effectively gives him a pool of 156 points and is like regenerating 15 per round.
Except the Real Robot also has 25 Arsenal Space instead of 4 and already has better weapons. And that model comes with Beam Coat for free and the energy focus makes Lightwave Barrier a prime choice, -24 energy a hit thanks to the Long Cape to reduce all none-missile damage by 50%. Combine with Quantum Generator for a 50% chance for attacks to miss unless they specifically spend a Hardpoint on Blindsight and on average you take -75% less damage each round before Spirit to offset the low DR penalty of that model too. And you still have a Hardpoint less to play with too since it gets 4.
I was mostly comparing the worth of Mysterious Power vs another upgrade so as to demonstrate that its value in upgrade points is sensibly superior.
I wasn't trying to prove that it makes it superior to Real Robots, or that a Real Robot cannot do better at a given level.
Though that is beyond the point I wanted to make, in your example though you used an EN recovery 5 EN short of the real amount. 150 EN would recover 50 EN/round since the default recovery is 5 EN per round and Reactor increases the recovery rather than replace it. Just in case you've been recovering 5 EN less per round since the EN rules change (if we even had an encounter using them yet).
Quantum Generator and Beam Coat/Lightwave Barrier cannot coexist simultaneously but the Real could give up the Quantum Generator for a while if its benefits are jeopardized. The energy barriers do not have their energy costs mitigated by Long Cape, which only accounts for energy spent for maneuvers. Similarly, its 156 effective energy (+ savings on recovered energy per round) only works if all that energy is spent on maneuvers.
Sure, I'll concede that the Real has an edge over a Super that would invest massively into energy, but I'll never pretend that such an investment is actually a good idea. The point was only that as far as energy recovery goes, a Super is better served spending its upgrades on Mysterious Power than the equivalent amount on Batteries. It doesn't have to be maxed. A mecha's energy economy should be planned around the amount a player estimates will be needed throughout an encounter. The rest should be invested in making the robot more efficient at what it does.
Else you end with a robot with tons of energy but that cannot do much with it.
I believe that your point is that a Real Robot has an easier time managing just that. I don't recall opposing the notion (but given the recent exchanges here I imagine your points were also extensions of your previous arguments).
On that subject, I estimate that a Real robot indeed has an easier time at it. One of the reasons I feel a Super still has the upper hand in a gestalt campaign is that it can more easily be configured to fill specific gaps in a build or better existent advantages, which is often what is required for optimization.
But not in everything. Stealth, for one, isn't a Super forte.
