Mechwarrior Online

[Lantyssa]

I'm up to one kill.  Plenty of assists, but I'm guessing those won't count.  Don't think it's going to happen because I don't have the time nor assaults in my bays.

[satael]

I'm not a very good player but this latest challenge (get kills with steiner mechs) is really bringing out the worst in people as everyone seems to be chasing the kills instead of trying to win the game. b

[Falconeer]

I hate to give advices cause I like to consider myself a shitty player and I can't really teach anybody anything, but seriously folks just copy my Stalker 5M build. Got 20 kills in 7 matches and I am to 3.10 K/D in the solo queue with it. Alternatively, super cheap Hunchback 4G: AC20 + 3ML. A natural born finisher, easy go get a couple of kills per match as long as you don't lead a charge (2.40 K/D with it). And no, I don't stand back to steal kills, even if I wanted to that would require a surgical precision I simply don't have.

[Sir T]

Whats your stk build

[Hoax]

Its posted up thread. I found that people play like retards and kamikaze charge with AC20 hunches and AC40 jagers a lot more. Also there is almost no ECM.

LRMs are super effective in this environment as are solid SRM builds to pop the AC20 = kills brigade. Beyond that just play smart by forgetting about the kill goal. It took me 11 games to get my first 5 kills. My next 10 kills were in 8 games as I adjusted back to playing like less of a retard. Then I got stuck on 19 for awhile which again was mostly my fault as I was cracking under the strain of almost having it done and trying to force that final kill.

When in doubt:
Firestarters - 35 Ton Lights
Jenners - 35 Ton Lights
Hunchbacks - 50 Ton Mediums (Outclassed by Shadowhawks)
Shadowhawk 2H - 55 Ton Medium
Cataphracts - 70 Ton Heavies
Stalker - 85 Ton Assaults

Those are the better in their weight class options for this event. Some people like Griffins and they can certainly lrm which again is very strong in an all IS no ECM battle.

[Sir T]

Ok yes, the previous page. I'm a retard.

[Lantyssa]

I hate to give advices cause I like to consider myself a shitty player and I can't really teach anybody anything, but seriously folks just copy my Stalker 5M build.

Requires having a Stalker.  A Commando doesn't cut it for getting kills.  Assists yes, kills no.  If I have time to do more drops I'll go in my Cataphract, but the 3D is the least optimal of my three.

I guess I just really suck in comparison to y'all, but 300 hundred damage is a really good match for me.  I can't hit at range, and brawling is a quick death in this game.

[Hoax]

I'm a very bad light pilot, I hate playing death by a thousand cuts style. I average just under 150 damage per match on all 3 of the lights, which are stock trial rentals, I've put any time into. 300 damage on a light is good for me.

I did pick up around 5 of my 20 kills in lights because I make sure I'm getting first win of the day bonus to minimize leveling pains.

All that said, its too late now probably but the KTO-18(C) and SHD-2H(C) are both serviceable mechs we all have access to since trial mechs count for kills. The Kintaro especially because again, if everyone is piloting lumbering IS mechs (assaults and heavies have been at like 40% usage in the trench) with AC20/40 and nobody has ecm...  Dear god its easy pickings for lrm boats with some speed like the KTO-18.

My kill average is over a kill per map on that mech and I know that has risen since this weekend because it takes a long time to kill clan mechs with lrms.

[Falconeer]

Vindicator art. It's coming next week. Hide your money.

[Hoax]

Hide your money? Its a shitty mech in almost every way. Hopefully its energy arm will sit high at least but by lore design its a pretty garb mech I wouldn't expect much even after PGI tinkers.

Hopefully they do something clever and lore-friendly with traits but I never count on these assholes to get anything right. If they do I was quite a fan in MPBT3025 but that was mainly because it was a discount and ppc's are love. In this game anything can mount ppc's and they are far from love after all the nerfs so who cares about the Vindi?

Prediction time:

VND-1R:
180 engine (yuck).
jj's (yuck now adays)
Energy (RA)
Missile (5 tubes - LT)
Energy  (LA)
Energy (head)

VND-1X
replaces LA energy w/ ballistic.
Maybe they give its missile point extra tubes? Maybe they add a second missile point with a 2x4 config or 1x5 1x2 config?
AMS?
Its going to be awfully stupid looking in MWO if people leave the right arm empty and put a big ballistic in the left arm unless they do something about the way the model looks.

VND-3L
adds 2 energy slots to the LT
comes with DHS and CASE
extra jj capacity probably?
ECM possible maybe?

None of those sound very good to me. 45-tonners are by the nature of the current MM system at a 10 ton disadvantage. We have five Blackjack configs, all with AMS, several with jets all of which should have better more flexible loadouts. The reality is that IS missile hardpoints are pretty garb unless you have a lot of them and the Vindi shouldn't be able to keep up with most of the other meds (Kintaro, Treb, Cent, Griffin, Wolverine, Shadow Hawk) in the massed missile department.

[Lantyssa]

ECM would make it the heaviest 'mech with that though, wouldn't it?  And the Cicada is ugly as sin.

[Sir T]

Aside from the Atlas DC, yeah it would be.

To be honest I'm not sure what the point is in having more than one mech in each weight inless its a stunning new design (like a quad mech) This is just another boxy mech. And in any case no-one is going to touch it  nor spend money on it without something special (like ECM or dual AMS) because its a freaking IS mech. Anyone with money right now is spending it on Clans not IS dreck.

[Hoax]

I'd really like to see a trait that goes as far as reducing the heat produced by a RA mounted PPC on these. Not sure that's enough to make them good but might push them closer to viable.

[Falconeer]

GUYS! IT IS PRETTY! Who cares about efficiency, you are all heartless and munchkins. I've been playing underpowered stuff since the boardgame days because it looked cool in the battles in my head. It's the same now, why else would I stuck with the Hunchback or the Awesome? Battletech had like 100 'mechs where about twenty were useful and the rest was crap and it was great regardless. I mean, have you ever bought a Technical Readout to enhance your game and win more matches? I bought them for the whole "'mech fantasy", and for the same reason now I buy and play the models I like. Yes, sometimes when no one is looking I also go "Whizzz.... Bang.... pewpewpew!" out loud in front of my monitor.

[Ironwood]

I'd really like to see a trait that goes as far as reducing the heat produced by a RA mounted PPC on these. Not sure that's enough to make them good but might push them closer to viable.

I think they might.  According to Sarna, they had a revolutionary heat management system on these mechs (stick your dick in water) so it might make sense.

I ain't buying anything further that ain't Clan tho, so it's all moot.

[Samprimary]

GUYS! IT IS PRETTY! Who cares about efficiency, you are all heartless and munchkins.

Maybe I am, in the sense that what is pretty to me is my enemy's smoking corpse.

[Lantyssa]

GUYS! IT IS PRETTY! Who cares about efficiency, you are all heartless and munchkins. I've been playing underpowered stuff since the boardgame days because it looked cool in the battles in my head.

I'm just trying to give them reasons to care.  I'll continue on with my useless 'mechs.

(Update on Mechbay -- By Sunday night with two hours to go I had five kills and well over 100 assists.  I just couldn't take a heavy slot anymore.  I'd die with having done 71 damage whereas running around in my Commando I'd rack up several hundred, provide ECM support, and leave a slot open for a Madcat.  Fuck hurting my team for an entire day of matches for a 300 mechbux bay.)

[Merusk]

GUYS! IT IS PRETTY! Who cares about efficiency, you are all heartless and munchkins.

Maybe I am, in the sense that what is pretty to me is my enemy's smoking corpse.

Yeah, this.

[Falconeer]

About that, Clan 'mechs are absolutely OP but as long as they are on both sides IS 'mechs keep killing stuff very well if you ask me. Griffin, Shadow Hawk, Kintaro, Hunchback and Blackjack are good Mediums if you can play. Hope the Vindicator will keep up with that.

[Ironwood]

I can vouch for the kintaro.

[Hoax]

That's mainly because the clan mediums are nowhere near as OP as the Mad Cat and Daishi are in their respective weight classes. Those mechs are so perfectly tuned that they make the Thor and Warhawk seem mediocre by comparison. IS lights still have a seat at the table too.

[Hoax]

Here comes FWL weekend for a mechbay (it starts in just over 2 hours). No idea what you need to do but the mech list should look like this:

Locust 1M, 3M, 1E, 1V
Spider 5V
Firestarter H
Jenner D
Raven 3L

Cicada 3M, 2A, 2B, 3C
Centurion A
HBK 4G, 4H, 4J, 4P, 4SP
Treb 7M, 5J, 5N
Griffin 3M, 1N
Kintaro 18
Shadowhawk 5M, 2H
Wolverine 6R

Quickdraw 4G, 4H, 5A
Thunderbolt 5S, 9S
Orion M, K, V, VA

Awesome 9M, 8Q, 8R, 8T, 8V
Victor 9B, 9K
Battlemaster 3M, 1G
Stalker 5M, 3F, 3H, 4N
Banshee 3M, 3E, 3Q, 5S
Atlas D

They could easily drop the Kintaro, Wolverine, Centurion and Victors without me batting an eye. They should keep the 1-off lights (including the Raven especially as no ecm w/ marik mechs would be pretty silly lrm-fest) because otherwise there will be zero lights for an entire weekend. I sort of expect them to drop Thunderbolts and make all variants of Battlemaster, Shadowhawk, Griffin and Firestarter part of the event because they are too lazy to spend 5 minutes googling to get the lore correct.

I also expect, despite 100% feedback saying kills being the only path to success is not optimal for it to be 20 kills again, these guys are lazy sacks of shit whenever possible.

If they were smart they would allow the Spider 5D and the DDC to be used just to decrease the power of lrms during the weekend but they aren't smart. They probably won't allow the 3L and the only ECM will be the Cicada so if you've got that be prepared to win often.

[Falconeer]

They listened. To get a mechbay you need 100 points, where a kill is 5 points and an assist is 1 point.

[satael]

And as a bonus I can do this challenge with my founder atlas (just put in 2xlrm20+some beams for close combat and off to get easy assists...and maybe a few kills) 

[Hoax]

Use the ECM Cicada or the Raven 3L if you have them. Your team will win.

If you don't, use lrms because that will be easy points.

If you hate lrms and have no ecm... well enjoy the best faction mech pool in the game and all IS matches. Join FWL, by far the best great house and quite organized since Solaris7 days if CW ever comes around. You'll avoid the Goons in Liao (if they were to come back for CW) and the 3 huge factions full of kids and newbs (Davion > Kurita > Steiner) and your faction color is purple. Which is pretty fabulous.

All credit to PGI here though, they modified the win condition and they got the faction mechs spot on correct this time. They are only missing the all-faction FS9-H which is a 100% acceptable oversight. The only shame is many players will get to 100 pts in 15 or less matches so by Saturday night the all IS matches will be quite rare. I wish it was 200 or 250 even points.

[Falconeer]

Pretty much the official 12 vs. 10 test. Open to everyone.

Schedule
Friday Aug. 15 Starting at 6pm PST / 9pm EST
Saturday Aug. 16 Starting at 6pm PST / 9pm EST
Sunday Aug. 17 Starting at 12pm PST / 3pm EST

[Hoax]

Just a quick heads up on the mech sale this weekend these are the mechs that will almost assuredly NOT be on sale on the last two (maybe 3? Kurita didn't get a sale) sales in the future:
-Pretty much every M variant is exclusive to Marik and they are often expensive mechs worth buying on sale thanks to DHS/Endo/FF upgrades coming on them.
-Thunderbolt 5S & 9S (Steiner already had their sale)
-Victor 9K (unless Kurita gets another event)
-Spider 5V (unless Kurita gets another event)
-The HBK-4SP may not show up in any more sales, its hard to say
-The TBT-5J also may not show up again

You can get more info or do some research yourself from a great pdf found here: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=1219.0

[Lantyssa]

Bay obtained.  One extra match because it always seems to need it to award things.  Final tally: 6 kills, 86 assists.  I stuck to lights and mediums most of the time and that seemed best for my style.  Any heavy died doing half the damage of my average light/mediums' damage because while I'll zig-zag through terrain, I won't do pop-tarting with jets or buildings.  It's fucking stupid.

With the greatly decreased time-to-kill I think they should consider an 8v8 option, or 8v5 for IS vs Clan.  I had a lot more fun in the days when I wasn't having an entire company focus fire me.

[Kitsune]

I got pretty good results with putting two LB10-Xs and an ER-PPC on the arms of a Marmoset.  I never felt like I was getting quite enough oomph out of the three Ultra-AC5 setup that people seemed to favor on it, and was always a little annoyed at two being in the arms and one in the torso.  This way all of the guns are in the arms, and all of them hit fairly hard, without the heat going berserk.  Racked up a respectable kill count with it.

[Ironwood]

Spent a fuckload on the other two Kit-Foxes (Kit-Foxi ?) and then kitting them out.  Now grinding the XP to master them.

Because, why not ?

One is much the same as my prime, but the other is a Lurm only beast who's actually quite deadly.

[Samprimary]

With the greatly decreased time-to-kill I think they should consider an 8v8 option, or 8v5 for IS vs Clan.  I had a lot more fun in the days when I wasn't having an entire company focus fire me.

yes, this please

[Lantyssa]

Oh, my 2X and 4X Cataphract builds are stellar.  At least they were prior to the introduction of the Clans.  Unfortunately only the 3D counted for the 'mech bay.

[Hoax]

I'm meaning to make Stock Mech Monday tomorrow night, not sure if I should expect to see any of you but that'd be cool.

I've got the TDR-5S, KTO-18 and one of my 3025 variant Trebs ready to go.

[Sir T]

I played a bit In my locust and Raven but not enough to get a bau. I had some fun annoying and warming the backside of a Daishi with my flamer locust though, and one game was a facinating game were me and the opposition ECM Raven were flipping our ecm back and fourth and countering one another. I won. 

[Hoax]

So the dust has settled on the Marik (my house of choice) Sale and I bought:

VTR-9B
VTR-9K
TDR-5S
SHD-5M
KTO-18
TBT-5N

The Treb was so I can Elite Trebs mainly I'm not keeping the 5N and 5J but I always forget which one I am keeping of the two. None of these are best in class for their chassis and I bought the Thunderbolt and Kintaro mainly with stock mech house games in mind.

Speaking of stock mechs, I played in the Stock Mech Monday thing last night. It was running for roughly three hours from 1830 PST onwards. I think the most we dropped with was 9v10 but most games were around 8v8 give or take until it got late on the east coast.

It was Tech1 stock, which means the mech must be in stock config (locations, armor values, everything) and it can't be a variant that mounts:
endo/ff
DHS
XL engine
streaks
pulse
ER
Gauss rifle

So I ran the TDR-5S (so many weapon systems, can do something at every range, fun and challenging) and the KTO-18 (such heat, fuck ghost heat so much, fuck PGI, hard to use but can pump out huge damage if you are alive for long). It was fun. At 8v8 using stock configs the fights last forever. As in literally there would be engages that started around 700 and moved into brawl range and then eventually both team survivors would separate back out to 500+ licking wounds, reorganizing, cooling down etc.

There was this guy who was a demon on light mechs and piloted a Locust exclusively throughout the night. Its another world dealing with lights when heat and ammo are huge worries, he won several maps through his play. At one point there was a brawl in that underneath area with columns on the map that has city and saddle (I don't know names) that just lasted a good 6 minutes straight. Was good times.

There were some impressively horrible players there. You would think that only people who had played enough to grow tired of pinpoint alpha meta would seek out a slow starting alternative house rules thing like that but there were AT LEAST 3 players who were just as bad as anything I've ever seen in solo queue, complete lost causes.

You waste a lot of time between each match trying to keep shit organized so you can drop again. They have a system where 1-2 of the top damaging players from the winning team swap with 1-2 of the lowest damage players on the losing team. I suck badly and I never swapped for either reason. There was only one stomp but it didn't feel like a the stomps people are used to.

***

On the PGI front the latest way to completely ruin the game is that they are going to remove all drawback from weapon modules. Making them mandatory. While also adding in ranks3-5 for each weapon module making them an even bigger jump in competitive edge. Because PGI is fuckstupid and hates new players obviously. Another reminder that they lie. They will never get CW out the door and if they do it will suck and probably have less than 15 maps available to represent multiple planets.

Oh they have also delayed the basic social functionality of guilds until the end of August. Because reasons.