wasn't there some kind of rule on whether certain weapons when mounted on arms allowed a mech to have hands?  That always seemed iffy to me.

Lower Arm Actuator, Upper Arm Actuator, Hands

All three took up single slot criticals on the TRO readouts.

That's why I wish they added armor penetration rolls to ballistic/energy weapons in the board game. A slug is more likely to penetrate armor and hit internals than a Laser or Energy weapon.

No, this will not be possible. You will only be able to select from either LRM launchers or SRM Launchers. However, you can swap out one for the other in the same slot. You will also be able to equip Arrow IV Launchers as well (if you have the money and tonnage ).

We currently plan on allowing for all "Missile" type slots found on the Stock versions of Mechs to be swappable with other Missile type weapons. However you will not be able to place guns in those slots (this is due to Art Placement swapping issues as well as Game Balance concerns(Sorry, no 2 PPC Catapult variant)). On the other hand, all "Gun" type weapons (PPCs, Gauss, Lasers, ect..) will be interchangeable in the same slots according to gun size. You'll know more once we work on the customization some more .

As far as MRMs are concerned, they are not coming in the initial release on MWLL.

good, i hate mrms anyway.  What good are a spam of 40 missles if they aren't gonna hit anything

Depending on the mech, I kinda agree with this. Obviously, the masakari has 4 PPCs, but that's fine - it's a massive assault mech. On MW2 I can create a Stormcrow build with 7 ER PPCs and 14 double heatsinks - which in my opinion is ludicrous. I really don't think a medium mech should be capable of mounting that much weaponry.   I'm certainly hoping that with MWLL mech customization is constrained sufficiently to make 'obscene' builds impossible. For example, if in MW2 you couldn't remove all the mech's armor, or decrease its engine to 1T, and if the number of available criticals increased with chassis size then it would be much harder to have a medium mech with 7 PPCs.

I like customization, but I think there should be some sensible limitations. And if customization will exist then weapons will need to be finely balanced so that the small lasers and AC2s of the world have a place.

The thing is, that ludicrous builds will never work no matter how high the customisation level. A mech with 7 PPCs would cook itself to a clot in the event of an alpha strike, not to mention non-existant armor and engine. So IF it can move its guns out of the hangar, and IF it survives long enough to charge them up, it could bring down another mech in a single volley, but would be a perfect waste of creds in the next few seconds as it melts into a formless metal blob. As is the case with the record sheet generators, custom mechs tend to be more expensive, but they have to be balanced or you will lose those C-bills you just invested. In a sense, most mechs not belonging to a successor state regular army ARE custom jobs, since they're worth a small fortune and often passed down across generations within families, resulting in some interesting mods slowly accumulating over the years. A fully customised mech could reflect that, provided you have the cash to build it. I've used a heavily customised Battlemaster throughout my tabletop and PnP years, which was an awesome machine geared towards every possible battle calamity, but that thing also costs 31mil to bolt together. I'd be very reluctant to take it out for a skirmish, if that meant I could lose it, or the investment it represents. So I guess the C-bills will take care of unbalanced or unrealistic designs, since it would be a complete waste of hard earned resources. I say bring on me tools, me parts and an extra bottle of PPC.

i read through that renegade ruleset for BT, it looks like a bit of pain to run it in a tabletop game without every round taking forever.  But damn, if that can somehow be worked into a MW game where the computer can handle all the penetration rules, that'd be awesome.  A whole lot more interesting than simply armor as HP.