Heavier Guns: A Quick Glimpse at Free Tonnage (Clan Mechs) - MWO

Sometimes, you need something fast and quick to outmaneuver the enemy. Sometimes you need something tanky to sponge up that damage without going down. Other times you just need to load up as many of the biggest guns you can find to shred metal. This guide is a cursory, but hopefully still helpful, look at how each of the different clan mechs currently available in the game meet this last goal.

There are a great deal of considerations when choosing a new mech, but the particular question of "How much weight will I actually be able to use for my desired purposes?" tends to come up most frequently. Luckily on the clan side, this analysis is actually fairly simple, as the existence or absence of fixed equipment on many of their mechs simplifies the issue. Whereas Inner Sphere mechs with their switchable engines, variable upgrades, and wide array of other customizable things tend to allow more role versatility for a given chassis, most of the time a given clan mech does what you've come to expect it to. Additionally because of this typecasting, the question of tonnage available for weaponry is often even more important.

Generally speaking, the heavier a mech is, the more weaponry it carries. This isn't always true however, and a lot of times mitigating the various downsides that come with moving up in weight (if that's what you or the manufacturer have decided to do) actually becomes more costly.

I have included Origins IIC mechs in this table, by request. The numbers given assume Endo Steel upgrades, the maximum Clan XL engine, and like all the others maximum armor.

After I apply maximum armor, approximately how many tons do I have left over to work with?

Remember this is just one rough statistic to consider when choosing a mech. Things like hardpoints, hardpoint locations, jump jet capacity, speed, maneuverability, heat management, and quirks can all be very important as well. Additionally, sometimes what you would have almost certainly used free tonnage on is already accounted for as fixed equipment (such as the 4 heat sinks in the Nova's side torsos) and skews the validity of the above numbers slightly. Nevertheless, I have found this information to be a good starting point, and hope you find it useful as well.