I love almost all of these, especially the rearrangement of reliable damage and the changes to the more generic seeming classes such as Assault and Rainmaker, but I have a major concern that the Goliath is far more fragile and also does a lot less damage. It used to be a (perhaps somewhat overpowered) choice between getting through 25hp at long range where everything faces resistance, or coming within range 5 and risking being blasted by potentially triple 5 damage shotguns. Your changes to it, while good overall, have made it very easy to either withstand the damage up close or destroy it from range - it's tougher than most but no longer a massive obstacle as it once was, which makes me worry it's going to be more of an ablative block of HP that only lasts a round or two, especially with even more taunt from the nicely upgraded Crush Target. But... I also have not tried the change yet, so this is all speculative. Have you or anyone tried the new Goliath a lot? Can it really survive without Siege Plating? Should I just give it even MORE hp to make up for it? Is this comment too long? (yes)
Viewing post in Lancer: NPCs Rebaked comments
So to answer a long comment with a long reply, touching on two main points:
1). Yes, the damage on the Goliath is lower. I'm not a fan of tier-scaling multiattacks as noted throughout the supplement, and more to the point, my personal view of the Goliath is I don't really want it to be a high damage threat in that way. Lancer isn't a game where Defender = Low Damage, many of the Defender-type NPCs defend through punishment or threat of reprisal, like Demolishers, Pyros, and Sentinels.
But those NPCs already exist, and I don't think the Goliath needs to also be another Defender whose primary threat comes from dealing high damage in the same way. I was personally more interested in exploring the Goliath as a lockdown bruiser off-Controller sort of unit.
2). Yes, the Goliath is objectively more fragile. This is a concern that was brought up during testing by people who initially saw the change and had the same reaction you did, but during testing the overall consensus across multiple reports was that it WAS more fragile, but not in a way that really made it a completely irrelevant unit, if that makes sense. Yes, if you start a Goliath all the way across the map and have it trundle towards the players, it can get killed by long-range artillery before it can get into the fight, but that's a thing that can already happen via Seeking Payloads, Paracausal Mods, Swallowtails locking on to people to shred them, the Kidd's FABI mods, etc.
I considered adding more HP to compensate for the loss of Siege Armor as I did with other NPCs like the Barricade or Demolisher, but I felt that at a certain point simply adding more HP to an already big pool could start to get frustrating to deal with in an unenjoyable way, and testing with the HP unchanged didn't prompt any major "this isn't working" type issues, so I elected to leave it as is.
In exchange for the lower damage and lower overall toughness via Siege Armor, the Goliath rebake gains additional maneuverability via Towering Stride, and more importantly gains additional effective map presence via its various tech actions. Crush Targeting is now no longer on a recharge, but it also has optionals such as Mag Gauntlet and Coercive Force which allow it to extend its reach and pull people out of position and into its grasp. I tend to view Siege Armor as something the Goliath was given in order to let it weather fire while trundling into the fray. With an easier ability to both get to the fight and start affecting people at greater range, I no longer saw Siege Armor as a necessary part of its kit.
As always, I recommend trying things at the table for yourself, because first impressions can be deceptive, but that's the overall gist of it. My recommendation for those that want tougher rebake Goliaths is to apply the Veteran template and consider using the revised NPC structure/stress tables.
Thanks for the long reply :)
Yeah, I knew that without having tested it I was risking all of the usual perils of analysis in a vacuum - I only made the comment because the Goliath seemed to be getting it both ways, less damage AND more fragile, and it didn't feel that the mobility or utility upgrade would compensate enough... but I've seen enough cases where actual play makes the read-through white room analysis basically useless to happily accept that you tested it and no it's fine really. Thanks for placating my uncorroborated doomsaying, then!