>>96727450
He replied to the wrong post.
>>96726852
Faction bonuses should be paid for because anything that makes a mech stronger should be paid for. Restrictions in parts (soft or hard) should not be considered towards the "power level" but are there for fluff.

For example if the faction is "mecha knights" the bonus could be "rerolls the first melee attack but has half range on all range weapons" then a player could just make a mech without any ranged weapons and ignore the downside.

In older editions of 40k, for example, you had to pay for detachment bonuses too, whoch was a way to balance detachments that were just plain stronger than one another.

Immagine of there was a faction bonus called "ultimate champions of legend" and it doubled the HP and damage of all your mechs. That would be nuts and OP, but if it also doubled the points cost of all your mecha it would probably be fine. Restrictions like "no mass-production parts" are mostly for fluff and players can likely build around them.

I disagree with >>96727106
You should avoid "free set bonuses" like "if you use 4 desert raider parts you get +2 speed" because then that always becomes the optimal way to build that, unless you nerf the desert raider parts to compensate for that bonus but then theose parts become useless when you are not using the bonus.

Basically, free faction bonuses narrow your meta.

If you want the "desert raider jackal mech" to be better than the generic "jackal mech" and if you want the "hyperion jackal mech" to have +2 armour-piercing damage then thehyperion and desert raider version should cost more. How much more, idk, but since they are beter versions than the generic one they should have a higher price.

BTW, how do you test your game? Do you do online or in- person? Because if it's online I'm interested in checking it out.