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[Flying Dice]

And then people continue to always vote against Terra Therma because they want to spam alphas on cold maps. :V

[MrRoboto75]

Check out Lethal Lava Land Terra therma

[Damiac]

My problem with terra firma was the same problem I have with a number of maps.  Horrible visibility. 

The fact that the hot maps completely ruin thermal vision is also unfortunate, you'd think the stupid thermal vision could calibrate itself to the environment instead of just making your whole screen bright white...  Not that thermal vision is of any use 90% of the time due to the terrible range on it.

Nightvision has similar issues, but not as bad as thermal...

The problem is some parts of some maps are so dark you can't see anything but the little red arrow, so I'm firing at rectangles and I can't even tell if there's something between me and the enemy.  If I turn on night vision, firstly the range is rather limited, secondly it makes anything bright (like lasers...) outrageously bright, like, saturating the monitor's brightness and hurting my eyes level bright.

Of course, polar highlands has the opposite issue, during the day the map is so bright once again you get complete saturation, and it's offensive to look at.  I get a headache if I play too many levels like that.

I wish they'd just limit the max brightness to some degree, and give nightvision/thermal vision the same range as regular vision.  Or better yet, just have the damn maps lit well enough to see...

[Wiles]

Have you tried fiddling with your gamma? Terra Therma is one map I haven't had trouble seeing stuff on. I have a much harder time seeing things on maps like River City.

[Damiac]

The thing is, I've messed with the gamma and brightness a bit, but like I said, maps like polar highlands daytime are already painfully bright, so I can't bear to make it any brighter.  Unless I'm gonna start messing with settings for every map, but that seems like a huge pain in the ass, and at that point they might as well just make it so you can see what the hell you're doing on every map.

Some parts of terra firma are kinda dark, but it's not a problem with the whole map, just a few spots.  River city at night is just torture...  I spend the whole time shooting at red boxes and hoping I actually have a line of sight to them.  At the very least, it'd be nice if the targeting would tell you if you have a line of sight...

[Wiles]

Hmm... Well if anything the new Terra Therma seems darker in places, but the main fighting areas seem well lit. Haven't played it enough to see if I like it or not but there are some really annoying audio bugs on it right now.

[MrRoboto75]

I dumped all my bonus C-Bills from mechtoberfest into a Locust 3V.  First match in it actually went kinda well.  The rest of the c-bux went into a bigger standard engine for my hunchback, so it can now go around 70 kph.

[Rince Wind]

I like the 250 in my Hunchbacks. Decently fast especially after getting the elite speed perk. And even assaults need to be wary of their firepower.
For the Mechtoberfest I mostly used the -4P, easy to get kmdds with those lasers. Totally hadn't anything to do with me being too lazy to switch engine and modules over to another Mech.

[Damiac]

I just realized I had an XL-235 engine laying around, well not exactly laying around, it was attached to a blackjack.

This was a really great find, because my Cataphract-4X came with a puny standard 220, and that was making it difficult to make a decent build.  Those engine heatsinks are important!

This is what I ended up with.  I'm pretty pleased with it, even if the loadout is a little weird...

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=44&l=0892e8c54d8f544b64a43196a7b52a5d43ffa061

Alpha damage is a pathetic 26, but I can fire the ac2s and 5s continuously for a very long time before overheating.  If I need more immediate damage output, I can fire the Medium pulses, but of course there's a fair price to pay for that in heat.  With just the ACs I put out 11.58 dps, if I add the lasers it goes up to 15 dps. 

I'm considering shaving off a ton of armor, and dropping 2 tons of ammo to swap the mpls to an LPL instead.  I'd certainly appreciate the greater range, and LPLs are ever so slightly more heat efficient.  I've only ever run out of ammo once, and it was a very successful round, so I can probably afford it.  Cataphracts are such large targets, especially the CT, so I can get away with shaving leg armor a bit. It would drop my max dps and alpha by about 1 damage, but I'd be able to apply it at a longer range.

The main problem with this build is also what makes it so good for me.  This build requires me to basically just stare down targets and pepper them with AC fire, meaning I don't get to do much shielding.  The thing is, that's what I've generally been doing anyway... so at least now I'm playing a build suited to it!  Still, I need to get better at shielding...

EDIT: The new terra therma is OK, I guess. I'll certainly need to get a bit more used to it, but nothing seems offensively bad about it from first glance.  It does suffer from visibility issues in some of the map, against just far too dark for my tastes, especially mixed in with the super bright glowy lava.  I didn't realize my monitor could produce the light output of several suns, but apparently it can when I play mechwarrior...

[Knave]

What's a good hunchy 4p build?
Currently running with a pair of ER PPCs and 4x MLs, but it leads to some pretty big heat issues if I fire them all together.


I find I'm getting my CT blow up real good most matches. Very different from piloting my super fast 150kph Jenners.

[Rince Wind]

I like the standard med lasers. 6 in the right torso, and some more as backup (one in the head, one in each arm, so you can use those for those difficult angles), because you don't want to fire more than 6 at once, iirc. A 250 standard engine, ferro (or endo?) and double heat sinks. Armor is nearly maxed, round down to the nearest full ton. Add heatsinks. I thinks that is my build, not ingame right now.
Then stay with the assaults and heavies and join the fight once it is at close range. You have a nice alpha with no ammo concerns and are reasonably fast. You make a reasonably good bodyguard vs lights (though I always prefer if they get pounded by LRMs...) and can kill anything. Just don't go toe to toe with heavies and assaults for more than a salvo or two.

If you want to snipe, I am sure there are better chassis to use than the Hunchback, some that have useful quirks for that.

[Kanil]

ferro (or endo?)

Hopefully the latter. ES is better than FF in every situation, and FF should only be used on 'mechs where you're installing both.

Also, I can't find any Huntsman to play with, and the one I did find and "played with" survived the match. D:

[Flying Dice]

Had a chance to get in and test out the Loyalty Cataphract. It's got the same super-tanky structure quirks as the 0XP, 25% torso turn rate, and minor combat quirks for ballistics and pulse lasers.

More importantly, it can run 5x Medium Pulse and the LB 10-X +2t ammo without being super hot, also take MASC, and still use a standard engine. Thing can get tanky as hell with good torso twisting, and the frequent 30-pt pinpoint plus the crit-seeking feels very nice. I like it.

Not so sure about the BJ-2 though, you need a decently large engine for that one, but if you do you're basically reduced to taking four SRM4+Art or running (bleh) without Artemis even if you run an XL. None of the options I've tried really feel that good. Might be a map-specific 'mech, I can see it doing very well on stuff where you can stay in one area poptarting or hill-humping. If you're on Polar Highlands you're fucked.

[Wiles]

I might have to try your Cataphract build, I was just running 3x LPL + an AC10 with an XL280 and that wasn't working very well for me.

For the Blackjack I stuck an XL225 in it because it is the biggest engine I own that fits, with that I was able to put 4x ASRM6s on it. I don't really know what I'm doing with it, I think poptarting is probably the best way to use it because getting in any kind of brawl usually ends pretty horribly

EDIT: Has anyone ever encountered an invalid loadout error when there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the mech? I was using my BJ-2 yesterday and everything was fine but today I logged in and it says it is invalid. When I click on the error symbol it doesn't say anything other than ALERT: Invalid Loadout. Usually it tells you what is wrong (no engine, no ammo, etc..). No amount of fiddling in the mech lab seems to fix it (I've stripped everything and put it back on).

EDIT2: It seems to have been something to do with the armor bug on the Blackjack that they just hotfixed. After fiddling with the RT armour values it works again.

[Kanil]

I'm also running 4x ASRM-6 on the BJ-2. It's basically a Griffin 2N, except it's slightly worse at everything... but only slightly -- it still works just fine.