gonna have to offer some pushback on this one chief - nobody shames my toku that easily and gets away with the last word. this being said: I may love said toku, and I may be a [AUTO-CENSORED BY PILOTNET], but a bootlicker I am decidedly not. this post is not an endorsement of HA, nor will it ever be, so all you anthrochauvvie fucks about to crawl outta the woodwork can bite my shiny metal ass >:(
here's the thing about HA's design philosophy: those fuckers LOVE their experimental tech. be it the blinkspace "aegis" bullshit that stubfuck mcgee (aka the napoleon) uses, the stolen tech from los voladores that powers the sunzi, or the literal gunship-scale railgun on the barbarossa, HA loves taking whatever dangerous experimental bullshit they can find and slapping it on a mech to see what works
as one might expect, HA mechs naturally need to be able to withstand aforementioned bullshit if they wanna have a fighting chance on the battlefield. HA mechs aren't built to win, they're built to endure - both the enemy onslaught, as well as whatever nonsense is going on with everything the frame has strapped to it. they don't need armor or speed or sensor range, what they need are things which allow them to survive long enough to use their tech and not die instantly - namely, heat cap (and limited systems, so you can use the weird shit more often)
put another way - HA mechs make for great project mechs, because you can slap whatever you damn well please on there and can be fairly certain your mech won't spontaneously combust the minute you boot it up with fifteen new weapons and systems shoved in there. this being said, yes, some of the equipment HA produces does actively encourage its pilots to purposely test the limits of their mech to achieve peak combat efficiency - but like I said, that's only if you want to win. HA wants to endure; to survive combat with enough resources to return fire when the enemy inevitably tires itself out
point is, if you wanna fuck around and find out with new mech tech, get yourself a HA frame. preferably secondhand; they go through the damn things more than fast enough with as many wars as they insist on starting. (though maybe check to see if the mech still has something inside it first before purchasing - er, don't ask.) look for the ones that are dated as close to SecCom as you can - from what I hear, the newer models on the market don't hold together for shit (unless it's a gilgamesh, in which case that's apparently on purpose)
> Speaking as a former Sherman pilot of... too many years, I can confirm that modern Armory frames pale in comparison to their older counterparts. I suspect that this discrepancy in quality can be attributed to resource shortages - Union has been more diligent in cracking down on supply lanes to Ras Shamra as of late, preventing the necessary resources for their mech foundries from reaching them. As such, the Armory is forced to utilize subpar materials from their own rapidly-dwindling resource pools, resulting in lower-quality mechs that degrade far faster than they should.
More to the point, Slipshod is correct - Harrison Armory's design philosophy is that of stubborn endurance. So long as the enemy can be outlasted, it can be defeated. Many features which amplify power under dire straits (such as those on the Tokugawa and the Genghis) are intended as last-resorts; optimally, those systems never see use in combat. However, should a pilot find themselves in dire straits, a mech's failsafes may be intentionally overridden in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy long enough for allied forces to regroup, often at the cost of the pilot's mech - if not their own life - as they become the immediate priority for enemy forces to deal with.
Unfortunately, many pilots across the Omninet saw the footage of this "last-resort doctrine" in practice and decided that maximum damage output was more appealing than long-term survival. A predictable conclusion, in hindsight, but disappointing nonetheless.
-- Slipshod & Lockbreaker
