Most of the answer for this is in the post above. IS techs are just that good. The other half of the question is answered in a word: Logistics. These ‘Mechs aren’t going to get distributed piecemeal, they’re going to get concentrated into Elite formations with excellent logistics.
And if they are short of them something has gone really wrong or they're on a really long campaign
I think it is worth it. an ER PPC is 7 tons and with 6 leftover tons to play with (as long as you go endo and DHS) you have a rather strong secondary armament. alternately an LB10 is possible though the secondary armament is a bit anemic.
Honestly think 5/8/5 is where the Hatchetman wants to live. It's a bit light for a slow medium, but it does let it mount quite heavy weapons for its size. In a long-range fight it has its negatives, but in a close-range brawl in a city or in broken terrain where it can use its jump jets, it can punch well above its weight class. A Dragon, for instance, would not enjoy turning a corner to find itself face to face with a Hatchetman.
Yeah, MG rounds are almost as explosive by weight as nuclear weapons.
There are two problems with that. First, trading away durability means that on average your XL version will have fewer turns of useful combat. Second, until you've displaced all light mechs from your forces price matters. Two standard engine mediums are better than an XL engined medium and the bugmech you have to put in the other mech cubicle because you blew your budget on an XL engine.
At 5/8 there's even less need to use an XL engine. You can get the 4 tons for a 225 rated standard engine and gyro upgrade and the 3 tons to max the armor just by switching the AC-10 for an ERPPC and switching to double heatsinks leaving endosteel and ferro-fibrous savings for other things.
On tabletop you have both a melee phase and a weapon fire phase so you aren't limited to firing machineguns and small lasers with your melee attack. What you can't do is fire anything in the limb making the melee attack. So the stock Hatchetman can fire it's left hand medium laser, it's autocannon, and strike with its hatchet, but it can't fire its right hand medium laser. If the right hand medium laser was replaced with a pair of smalls it still wouldn't be able to fire them with the hatchet.
But then you don't have a 45-tonner that can headcap with it's main gun.
There's nothing special about being 45 tons. You can get an LB-10X into a 50 or 55 tonner at 5/8/5 with a standard engine if you ditch the waste of mass hatchet and you can get more of them than you can get XL engined 45 tonners. If you had endosteel in production you could do it at 45 tons.
Doesn't seem to be one on this forum. Can I recommend This one on the Catalyst forums?
generally agree on the XL engines. I prefer leaving things standard generally. but that 6 9 6 move profile is solid. the armor loses the least efficient half ton of armor but is otherwise full. and from a story perspective CASE will save the pilot so I think you would go for it over full armor. at long range it is LRM 5 and a ER PPC with the ability to dissipate 22 heat it can jump 6 fire and generate 1 heat if it runs no heat. short range but not mid it is ER PPC and 2 medium lasers if it walks it is heat neutral if it runs it generates 1 heat. in melee it can shoot the 2 ML and ERPPC as well as hatchet for 5 5 10 9 in damage ideally you will want the side or rear but if the mech is worn down a bit you can totally cripple or kill from the front.
There's one really, really big problem with that notion. The guy who said he thinks the Hatchetman should move 5/8/5 is the author. Any discussion of Hatchetman concepts that don't move at 5/8/5 after that are definitely off topic.
