Lithium Fusion Engine (Mecha-Press)

Descrption

Originating from the Mecha Press magazine, the Lithium Fusion Engine is much like a hybrid car, taking a smaller engine and pairing it with a network of Lithium Fusion batteries to store surplus energy that the mech is not using and release it on demand.

Construction and Gameplay Rules

Though the network of Lithium Fusion batteries occupy up to 14 critical slots (some can be integrated into the engine using the same rules as heat sinks), they add negligible mass. As a result, to find the tonnage of the engine, before calculating the engine rating and reduce the desired Walk MP by 1. For example, a 60 ton mech (such as the Prodigal Son) using a Lithium Fusion Engine with a Walk MP of 6 would only need a 300-rated Lithium Fusion Engine, instead of a 360-rated Standard Fusion Engine.

Lithium Fusion Engines cannot be combined with XL Fusion Engines.

Every destroyed battery will produce 1 point of heat for the next turn. If five or more batteries are destroyed, reduce the mech's Walk MP by 1.

Legality

As a non-canon item, Lithium Fusion Engines are not under any circumstances Tournament Legal, and if they were to appear under Total Warfare rules, would most likely be classified as Experimental Technology. In the original publication, they are marked as Level 3 technology.

Balance

In lighter mechs, Lithium Fusion Engines do not provide as much of a benefit as an XL Engine, and thus could be considered the poor man's answer, but as a mech increases in weight the benefits of using a Lithium Fusion Engine increase dramatically.

Using the formula provided above (shared again here: Tonnage x (Desired Walk MP – 1)) to determine engine rating, an Atlas could carry a 200-rated Lithium Fusion Engine instead of a 300-rated standard fusion to go at the same speed as before (not only benefiting from a lighter engine, but a lighter gyro as well), or could carry a 300-rated Lithium Fusion to gain the same performance as a 400-rated standard engine.

Furthermore, it becomes possible for mechs to achieve equivalent performance to engine ratings equal to or greater than 405, with a hypothetical 375 Lithium Fusion in a 75-ton mech providing a 450 standard fusion engine’s level of performance, or a 400 engine in a 100-ton mech providing a 500 standard engine's performance (keep in mind that even the 500 XXL still weighs over 160 tons).

This equation breaks down when used on a SuperHeavy mech (which can be forgiven, as SuperHeavy mechs didn't even exist when these rules were published), with an engine of equal rating to the mech's tonnage allowing it to move as fast as an UrbanMech, and at the same time having the mass of the SuperHeavy Gyro from 8 tons to 4. If you chose to use a 400-rated Lithium Fusion Engine in a 200-ton mech, though, you would get the equivalent of a 600 engine worth of performance (3/5 movement on a SuperHeavy), an engine rating that doesn't even exist under any current version of official rules.

On the other end of the scale, with sufficiently light mechs, the weight savings or increase in performance provided by using a Lithium Fusion Engine is not worth the increase in bulk or the risk of losing those performance benefits to a lucky critical hit, and thus it really does just become a cheaper and crappier version of the XL Engine.