Originally Posted by DviddLeff
Why are they not an alternate vehicle to a tank? They fill a similar role; that of fire support, just walk instead of roll. To balance their slower movement compared to the Lightning you and I both suggest they have more armour than it.
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Yes, but the armor is separated across components that can be individually damaged. The armor isn't designed to make the vehicle more powerful. It's just designed to keep the components alive longer. To put this into perspective it took 4 shots from a vanguard to destroy a lightning. On a vehicle that can strafe and dodge long range rounds 8 shots sounds like a good number. You might take 2 hits to destroy a weapon for instance. Again as I mentioned before turning the mech chassis to take hits on less needed components would then be a strategy. Getting hit in the back once might disable the momentary shield upgrade.
So it's not making them equal to a tank. The armor is just to make their larger target less of a disadvantage. Basically it would take a mech a while using AV machine guns to destroy a tank. (Hit and run attacks from afar to protect their components). While if a tank got a jump on a mech it would be a relatively "easy" kill. I guess I could see them as being an alternative in a way, but not in the sense that they'd be firing hard hitting AV rounds. Their DPS would be much lower. They lack a secondary gunner so a tank would tend to have a lot more fire power with one and less weaknesses with a gunner. For instance a Reaver dropping on a mech would be gamer over possibly while a tank would walk it off with its higher armor and possibly second gunner.