Mechwarrior Online

[Merusk]

I started running a Cata C4 with 4x SRM6,  2 Med pulse and an XL315 engine today.   Soooo many kills.  That thing is just vicious if I play it right.  Took me a few matches to learn I'm not front lines, but when I flank someone they go BOOM pdq.

This will be my 3rd cata and I've only got one skill left to unlock.  Hooray for double xp weekend.

[Arthur_Parker]

PGI

First, your English is better than mine, so drop the false modesty
Secondly, design took that giant list, remember the email I sent them? They took that, and in it, were dozens of ways to shift balance to make each variant of a chassis roughly equal.

I can't get into details other than to say: Changes to chassis and variants will come in pieces, over time, but there will be changes made to quite literally every variant of every chassis in the game - these will take time though.

Thank you for your well written post, though

That's in response to a long post that contains the line below that I think is accurate.

Picking non-ECM mech NOW is a SUICIDE if you are going to play it as a light, not sticking with heavies for protection.

So hopefully things are going to get shaken up a bit in the ECM/streaks area.

[Segoris]

Yeah, was some good matches last night with Apoc, Sam's roommate, Sam and his laughing guy in the background

I don't care
(I didn't care)

Oh snap, bringing it to the forum eh?

With that said -

[Samprimary]

uh oh. that is definitely a lot of damage. I feel myself ... caring


n .... no

[apocrypha]

Away from home for a couple of days. Neither of the mechlab webpages work very well on a tablet, so if someone could knock up an Android mechlab app in the next 30 mins it'd be great. 

[Slayerik]

SO, after my friend was ragging on the Awesome chassis and its huge center torso I decided to play it most of Sunday. Despite his claims that it is horrible, I was able to consistantly kill shit and lay down solid damage. With my 8Q maxed, I purchased a 8V, threw on double heatsinks and went to work. With an awesome, you HAVE TO BE ABLE TO TWIST TO ABSORB DAMAGE. Your arms/shoulders are giant shields. Use them. I was running a 3 PPC / 3 Streak / 1 Medium laser build that was surprisingly effective...but I decided it was time to shoot a Large Pulse. I threw 3 on in place of the PPCs....Underwhelming. Streaks were nice, about 1/3 of the time due to ecm madness.

New plan, brawl with SRMs / medium pulses / LLs. That, or try to run a lot of LRMS with tag.

Favorite 8Q build: 3 PPC / 4 medium lasers (290 standard engine) > 4-5 LLs > 5-6 PPC
Something about the 3 PPC followed immediately by 4 mediums makes things go BOOM. Very nasty in that 90-270m range.

[Merusk]

It's taking me a bit to learn how far to lead the SRMs since they have a travel time, unlike lasers. 

I'm also learning I'm just fucking terrible at mech circle-strafing.  Even in a zippy 73kph Cata with maxed basic skills I wind up with goddamn Cents eating my ass armor away with Ultra AC5s.  Fuck you YenLoWang!

[Segoris]

in case you aren't already doing this -
1) Open your missile bay doors as that will help SRMs launch faster from you. This is at the expense of increased damage to arms by a couple percent. I've noticed the lower delay in the missiles coming out to be well worth the trade off without question.
2) Use your jump jets for turning

[Merusk]

Yeah I'll fire once or twice then remember, "oh right.. open the bay doors, dur."

Jump jets.. yeah guess I should put those back on.   

[HaemishM]

Uhhhh.... what? There's a key for opening Missile bay doors?

[Arthur_Parker]

It's "/" on catapults, cents and stalkers, not needed on anything else I don't think, it opens automatically when you fire but adds to firing delay, it also shuts again if you aren't constantly firing missiles.

[Segoris]

I've never had it close again. I just press it once at the beginning of the match and leave it alone. That is on both catapults and stalkers

[Arthur_Parker]

If you don't open it via the key, it opens and closes again automatically.  I thought HaemishM might have been wondering how he was firing missiles with the doors shut.

[Segoris]

Oh duh, yeah. Completely misread what you wrote and took it as "if you open the doors and don't fire for a while then they will close."

[HaemishM]

If you don't open it via the key, it opens and closes again automatically.  I thought HaemishM might have been wondering how he was firing missiles with the doors shut.

Well, no I figured out when I saw the missile trails and the 'splosions that yes, my missile doors opened and closed automatically. I just didn't realize nor had anything in the documentation (ROFL) told me that that was even affecting anything I did. It's like having landing gear on a flight sim which doesn't require you to land - if the game doesn't tell you about it, you wouldn't know to turn it on.

Can I reiterate just how badly designed the UI on the client is that doesn't tell you ANY of this shit?

[Arthur_Parker]

It's in the key bindings in options, there's also a indicator light on the relevant mechs to indicate door status that they are going to tweak to make brighter.  The mech lab UI isn't great, which I believe they have a new version incoming for, they do need some kind of tutorial area but the weapon/piloting UI has come a long way in the past few months. 

The weapon rows change colour depending on range to crosshair which is nice, but without a tutorial a lot of people are going to miss that type of thing.

[Shannow]

They need a new UI programmer is what they need.

[Slayerik]

So, I've graduated to Awesome-9M

For my own sake, I'm linking these here. Feel free to comment on the builds if you would.

AWS-9M - 6 X Medium Pulse , SRM 6 (XL 385)

AWS-9M - 3 Medium, 3 Large, LRM 10 (XL 385)

AWS-9M - 4 Large Laser, SRM 4 (XL 385)

You may notice leg armor strippage. I do this on a LOT of my mechs. I just don't get legged enough to warrant 2-3 tons of extra leg armor ;)  Sometimes I'll even trim a few off the head armor, cause I can't remember the last time that was even in yellow or red.

[Merusk]

I can see stripping the legs as nobody shoots you there on purpose.

Head armor is entirely dependent on the chassis and the guy on the other end.  I've gotten at least 3 kills I shouldn't have in my Stalker and Catapharact frames because I got off a good alphastrike headshot.   The kills were a Cata, Atlas and Centurion which are "hey here's where the pilot sits, shoot HERE" mechs, though.    I've tried to pull the same on a stalker dumb enough to go toe to toe with me and a hunchback that stood still, but it didn't work.

[Slayerik]

So, does structure  = Max armor for that location?

So lets say my Awesome has 40/66 armor in the legs, does that mean they have to shoot through 40 , then 66 points of structure ?

EDIT: Structure is half the amount of maximum armor a mech can carry on the specific location. So in the example above, it would have 33 points of damage after the armor goes away.

[Falconeer]

From the latest Q&A, seems like Community Warfare is still alive, and actually a priority (mentioned somewhere else in that thread).

Q: [insert question about Community Wafare]

A: Community Warfare is coming in stages over the course of 2013. The first phases will include the concepts of Factions – Player run Merc Corps, and non-player run Houses. The second phase will include the territory conquest aspects, including the ability to fight for and control border worlds within the InnerSphere.

[Shannow]

From the latest Q&A, seems like Community Warfare is still alive, and actually a priority (mentioned somewhere else in that thread).

Q: [insert question about Community Wafare]

A: Community Warfare is coming in stages over the course of 2013. The first phases will include the concepts of Factions – Player run Merc Corps, and non-player run Houses. The second phase will include the territory conquest aspects, including the ability to fight for and control border worlds within the InnerSphere.

How come I get the feeling it will be some shitty concept like Clan Wars in World of TAnks?

[Merusk]

So, does structure  = Max armor for that location?

So lets say my Awesome has 40/66 armor in the legs, does that mean they have to shoot through 40 , then 66 points of structure ?

EDIT: Structure is half the amount of maximum armor a mech can carry on the specific location. So in the example above, it would have 33 points of damage after the armor goes away.

You're getting in to details I just don't know at that point.  I'm not one of the guys combing forums and devblogs for info, I just know "Shit he's all full armor... Wait now he's dead after I shot him once" = pilot went boom.   

[Evildrider]

Once you get past armor you basically get free crits on everything in that area.  Once the structure is gone you lose that area totally.

[Arthur_Parker]

He edited his own post to add the correct information.  Structure is half the max armour total.

[Samprimary]

i designed a mech based off of my playstyle and preferences.



Screw assault, this is the battery class.

[Samprimary]

HEY SEG

[Segoris]

So, I've graduated to Awesome-9M

For my own sake, I'm linking these here. Feel free to comment on the builds if you would.

AWS-9M - 6 X Medium Pulse , SRM 6 (XL 385)

AWS-9M - 3 Medium, 3 Large, LRM 10 (XL 385)

AWS-9M - 4 Large Laser, SRM 4 (XL 385)

You may notice leg armor strippage. I do this on a LOT of my mechs. I just don't get legged enough to warrant 2-3 tons of extra leg armor ;)  Sometimes I'll even trim a few off the head armor, cause I can't remember the last time that was even in yellow or red.

Dropping those engines down to 375 keeps 5 heatsink in the engine while only losing 2kph with speed burst included. Doing that saves enough weight to (almost) max out armor (build depending), and/or increase some weaponry, ammo, and/or add AMS if wanted. For 2kph that seems like a pretty solid tradeoff imo

And yeah, I don't know why but I almost never get to headshot awesomes.

[Segoris]

HEY SEG

Mother fucker....


/care on

[Slayerik]

I'm starting to care.
Good advice Seg, too bad I already got the 385 and the fucker cost me like 7 mil. So looks like its 2 mph gain!

Funny that our 4 man and Sam's 4 man got teamed up. Sam went off and got 1000 damage as usual...with his lrm spam I'm sure. ;)

[apocrypha]

i designed a mech based off of my playstyle and preferences.



Screw assault, this is the battery class.

And what's the flamer for on that one?

 

[Samprimary]

you put it in the head slot and key it to your push to talk button

[apocrypha]

Lol :)

Thinking about my 2nd mech, want to try a fast light. How's this look for a Commando build?

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=5&l=250e850d90ff90caea9121915ef6fac0d677cb96 (using that one cos it does costs)

3 x SSRM2
1 x ML
ECM
XL210 engine

[5150]

I tried commando's before ECM arrived and I had trouble keeping other lights under the reticle long enough to get a streak lock so I switched to beams.

YMMV as I may just be terrible with lights (indeed I hate my founder Jenner because its too twitch)

[Merusk]

Sometimes I feel the Xp handout is sort of fucked-up.   Sam's scorecard has a guy who did a total of 4 damage and got more XP than the loser with 4 assists and 310 damage.