Sparkies should have TMD instead of their crappy pea shooter

See the title. I actually made this change many years ago in my mod, because it's fairly obvious to me that a TMD weapon is a much more obvious choice for a combat engineer than a crappy gun that can hardly kill T1 tanks. Let's discuss.

First, the main role of the Sparky is to build PD, both T1 and T2, near the front line. What naturally counters the PD? A TML or MMLs. Obviously the Sparkies should have TMD to pre-empt that counter. The PD will kill nearby ground units, so the sparkies don't need their own guns for that.

Second, to piggy-back off Deribus's call for a fatboy buff, it's obvious that a mobile TMD escort could greatly improve the fatboy's survivability against TML. And it would be nice to give UEF something unique. And have I mentioned the current pea shooter is basically useless?

wouldn't that be op?

@liam_ how would that be OP?

I like the idea. Feels symmetrical abit since UEF and Cybran have sort of a rivalry and Sparkies would be very useful.

But they already do Jamming so maybe too much so?

Stealing Nomad features again?

Answering Liam_'s question, no, that wouldn't be OP. It exists for more than 10 years in Nomads. Although that would make faction harder to break and stop some TML rushes.

Sparky costs 225 mass. TMD costs 280 mass and isn't mobile.
So without a significant cost increase which then detracts from sparkies' other abiltities it seems too strong.
Also a sparky can just build TMD itself.

@maudlin27 there are plenty of other important stats other than just cost. There are range and reload time which matter a lot. Nomad Scarab has lower range and lower fire rate meaning it can't completely replace static TMD.