Been meaning to do this for a while, thought I'd share my findings. Fastest and easiest 5M C-bills I've ever made! Explanation: "Real Tonnage" is the tonnage it takes to get an engine to be operational, aka 10 heat sinks. An engine whose real tonnage is equal to or greater than that of a stronger engine flags a redundancy error in the adjacent column. No engines above 300 are redundant. Engines in yellow are redundant except for the fact they are the maximum possible of the chassis/variant listed. Minimum engines not considered, if you think it likely you'll need to build a turret mech, take care with your STD/XL 100-200s (all engine minumums are 100-200 range).
REMEMBER though, a few engine are redundant, but unfortunately it is also the MAX ENGINE some mech can take. Redundant engine as Max engine for specialized mech of note: 190 - Locust 240 - commando 275 - raven, hunchback, etc Esp true for XL275. Did not check on the STD engines, since for the most part only idiots would use STD on things like locust. .
enileph beat me to it. There, perhaps should be another column for "Max Engine for X variants". Any engine size that is the maximum for one or more variants cannot be considered redundant.
Thanks for the update! In a way yes. Though I have to say sometimes it is just a specific to one or two certain mechs within a series, and hero mech to boot. As with all things though. DO NOT SELL XL UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED THE CBILLS, and even then leave AT LEAST ONE of each rating, just in case some new mech would need them.
Mind you, depending on whether we get the ready mechs (the feature to select from a few mechs that has been fully setup) prior to a drop, you could find that you need more then one of the common sizes. I'm hanging onto 2-3 of the common sizes (255, 280, 300, 325) myself.
That's something else that could be added to this chart: Common weights between standard and XL engines. For easy switching between standard and XLs on builds.
255 > 280 > 300 = 1.5 tons per step for xl. 300 > 325 = 3.5 tons (reminder: going above 300-rating engines is usually a big tonnage investment, also for STD) 325 > 340 = 1.5 tons Standard engines are different from XL as they don't often have the 'same weight' and are a much cheaper investment, so you can find the single engine that fits exactly into your preferred armor and DHS levels. While I've bought 2x a STD270 engine, I wouldn't imagine a world where I would get an XL270, if I can adjust the build a bit for the XL255 or the XL280.