I suppose my perspective's different because I've had more matches than I can count where it's down to 5-6 on each side, most with a lot of armor stripped, and I was able to run around sawing through them fast enough to not take much damage back. MGs and their crits are still stupid-good as long as you aren't the sort of moron who tries to burn down armor with them, especially when you have a pair of really good SRM4s with just enough ammo left to cut into the critical components full of weapons/ammo.
Put another way, there's one type of 'mech that I never want to pilot: the pure ballistic/missile sort that goes for a big alpha build and then runs out of ammo when a good chunk of the enemy team is still alive. And that's what the Oxide comes off to me as. The closest I use to that is my Ilya Muromets, since I run that with the really old-fashioned chainsaw build (3x UAC/5, 3x ML), but in the end that still has the secondary lasers, and I take just enough ammo that I'm usually running out at about the same time that I run out of armor. I really, really prefer 'mechs with staying power, that can be fully useful from the first shot to the end of the match.
e: Basically, I see it like this re: damage: There are two competing paradigms, the alpha and the sustained. An alpha-centered build frontloads your damage in exchange for more damage spread and greater penalties on misses and partial misses (more ammo wasted/heat built up for no return). A sustained-damage build focuses on doing more accurate and consistent damage over the course of the match, rather than occasional (and typically early) bursts. This is especially apparent with ballistic and missile weapons, since you're forced to choose between more/larger weapons and more potential damage (ammo).
It also ties into playstyle. If you're highly aggressive, the sort of person who wants to go in and punch someone in the face, you'll probably do better with an alpha build of some sort, since you're going to die faster and be (typically) fighting at closer ranges (which reduces the effects of damage loss and dispersion due to twitchy aim at little blobs of pixels). If you're a cautious player who likes to hang back and poke for most of the match, you're going to do better with a sustained build, since you're going to live long enough to output a good chunk of your potential damage and get to the point where people are damaged enough for you to brawl successfully.
Furthermore, it's linked to the sort of games you play in. If you're dropping as a group, alpha builds are almost universally better, since you'll have an organized group of people all focusing fire, which makes up for the main weaknesses of them (low damage uptime, getting alpha'd back). If you're dropping into total PuG matches, it's a crapshoot-yeah, you sometimes get those great matches where all the randoms work together well and are competent, but you get a lot more where you need to do tons of damage to many targets and survive for a long time in order to carry a mediocre-or-worse team with no organization.
Take the ultimate extremes: a Direstar, and a Locust with a single small laser. The Direstar has a massive, terrifying alpha that can one-shot almost any mech... but it only gets one shot. If you miss or fail to kill, you're worthless. Even if you get a kill, you just traded an assault for a lighter mech (since most other assaults don't mount IS XLs and can survive the alpha to the CT). In any case, you're essentially saying "I will remove one enemy mech from the game and rely on my team to win a still-even match." That doesn't work out well in QB. It's why the Direstar and Bansheestar are derpy troll builds rather than serious ones.
Now take that Locust with the single SL. It has absolutely shit damage. It will take a lot of shots just to equal the single Direstar alpha. But if it's played with a good mix of caution, aggression, and a little luck, it can end up doing superior damage and lasting long enough to meaningfully impact the game. But, obviously, if the LCT pilot fucks up, it comes off even worse than the Direstar.
It's pretty evident where my preference lies, at any rate. I'm the sort of person who runs their dual AC/2 BJ-1 with 7 tons of ammo and usually survives long enough to use it all (barring a fast victory).
As an aside, the reason I feel that strongly about the Huginn and its backup MGs is exemplified by a match I had not too long ago. We ended up in a 3v5, everyone had cored components, and I had just used the last of my SRMs, leaving me with two MGs and 1500 ammo for them. Past that point I got four kills (three most-damage-dealt) and functionally won the game for us. If I'd been in an Oxide, not only would I have been useless in that situation, I would have been useless well before it because my ammo would have been depleted more quickly. Running a high-alpha low-endurance build is an implicit statement that you don't think you can/don't want to have to carry, because it's suited for organized play and flashy kill-secures rather than hoisting the weight of your entire lance.
--
Completely unrelated: Big two-week FP event. Win a ZEU-9S2 + MB and a bunch of warhorns, or an EXE-C + MB and a bunch of other warhorns if you're a clanboy. Also 150 MC, cockpit items, 1.2m C-Bills, and a pile of GXP.
Author
Topic: Mechwarrior Online (Read 108481 times)