Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[se5a]

I've seen clan loose FP a lot, it's not clan that wins, it's the team that has comprised of a single [unit].
I've yet to see a PUG vs PUG FP match, (but then I don't always look).
What gets my goat (or amuses me greatly, depending on my mood) is *that guy* on my team, who rants about the rest of the team, and how our leader (which leader? we have a leader?) sucks. etc. etc. etc. and complains about losing, when we're a PUG team going up against a 12 man [unit].

I pretty much go into the call to arms matches expecting to loose.
Sometimes we have someone who's a good leader and we have fun while losing (and very rarely even win).
Sometimes we just have a mediocre loose, but meh, we're playing at piloting big robots, so who cares.
Sometimes we just have *that guy* and it's a miserable un-fun loose.

I've recently re-jiggered my Raven 3L
now instead of a single large pulse laser, it has two medium pulse lasers, and a bigger engine.
the two medium pulse have more damage than the single large, and are way lighter, allowing me to fit a larger engine.
It's been surprisingly effective like this, I feel like it's tipped from being useless damage wise to a good knife fighter, while still keeping the support role with narc and tag.
the XL 270 has given it a good speed boost, which is probably more effective than the little bit of extra damage from the switch to medium pulse lasers.

[Flying Dice]

You can easily push it all the way up to the XL 295 even with that sort of support build - ECM, NARC (+2t ammo), TAG, 2x MPL; strip 6pt of armor from the head or left arm and you have the space and tonnage provided you took both endosteel and ferro-fibrous. No extra heatsink, but since you're only running two medium pulses you really don't need it.

[Damiac]

I just realized how engines work, and that they have built in heatsinks, and that I was really, really stupid to buy an XL220 when a 225 is 1 ton heavier and comes with a built in heatsink.  In other words, use the bigger engine, get higher speed, a more efficient heatsink, and free up 3 slots, or use the smaller engine, go slower, get a less efficient heatsink, and use 3 more slots.

So... anyone want to buy a lightly used XL220 engine? Only been blown up a handful of times, it's pretty much good as new .

[Flying Dice]

Don't forget that bigger engines also have internal slots to hold additional heatsinks.

That said, double heatsinks are excellent crit-padding, so there's some merit to stuffing IS mechs full of them as long as you have the tonnage and crit slots to spare. Take my BJ-3, here's what it looks like inside: More or less, at least. I mean granted in that example you need a shitload of heatsinks anyways, and there's not much to pad beyond the peeps, but it's a good visual display of the concept.

[Damiac]

Don't forget that bigger engines also have internal slots to hold additional heatsinks.

That said, double heatsinks are excellent crit-padding, so there's some merit to stuffing IS mechs full of them as long as you have the tonnage and crit slots to spare. Take my BJ-3, here's what it looks like inside: More or less, at least. I mean granted in that example you need a shitload of heatsinks anyways, and there's not much to pad beyond the peeps, but it's a good visual display of the concept.

Wait... you can put jumpjets in your torso slot? That's very interesting!

My BJ-3 has 1 er ppc, and 4 MPLs.  It's a mid to close range combatant who can actually do a bit of sniping before the fighting gets close.  At least, that's the theory, more often I notice a 'lone' enemy and go to take him out, then get killed by his teammates that were there the whole time.  Seriously, I don't know why I keep making that same mistake.  Just because you only see 1 on the radar doesn't mean there aren't more hiding.

I don't own any mechs large enough for the engines with heatsink slots apparently.  All I have are my 2 locusts(1e, 1m) and my 3 bjs (1, 3, dc). 

I'm keeping up in this mechtoberfest event, so with the 400 mc I can get another mech bay I suppose.  I'm considering saving it to put toward a locust-pb though.  Super fast and ecm... yes please.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, it's a nice bit of extra flexibility if you manage to fit them in. The first engine that can mount extra heatsinks is the 275. Obviously that build is an old-fashioned poptart and hillhumper, doesn't do well at all in brawls even with all those heatsinks.

The Pirate's Bane is hands-down the best value in cash-only 'mechs, and the Locust mastery bundle is excellent if you don't own any already. I play it pretty basic, but it's a pretty basic 'mech: XL 190, 4x Small Pulse, ECM, three extra double heatsinks to fill out the ten. Leaves a fractional ton open but what the hell would you do with that? You can do it like that, or with MLs, and either way it plays like a 1E with less firepower but more room for mistakes.

Oh, and if you like your BJs and haven't already qualified, buy some MC. Any amount, even the little pack. That's the lowest-tier loyalty reward, it gives you the BJ-2 and a mechbay. The 2 is going to be the first missile variant, with four side torso hardpoints. If my calcs are right it could run 4x SRM6 + Artemis with a little squeezing, or something like 2x SRM6 +Art and 2x SRM4 +Art easily.

[Rince Wind]

SRMs are nice. If I get too frustrated by not getting the kmdd with my Marauders I simply use the trial Orion IIC, run up to an assault and kill it dead. The LB20X helps as well, of course. It is not very good tactics, but I kill more tons than I brought.

[Flying Dice]

Wow. Just had the closest match I've ever seen. It was down to 2v2, myself in my ERPPC BJ-3 and a friendly ERPPC-boating assault against a dakka Night Gyr and a Kodiak. I went down opening the Kodiak up, but my teammate killed him. 1v1. My teammate was cherry-red in the CT, even a single small laser could have killed him... but the enemy Night Gyr was out of ammo and couldn't manage to pull off the DFA with contact damage.

[Knave]

Wow. Just had the closest match I've ever seen. It was down to 2v2, myself in my ERPPC BJ-3 and a friendly ERPPC-boating assault against a dakka Night Gyr and a Kodiak. I went down opening the Kodiak up, but my teammate killed him. 1v1. My teammate was cherry-red in the CT, even a single small laser could have killed him... but the enemy Night Gyr was out of ammo and couldn't manage to pull off the DFA with contact damage.

Sounds pretty intense!

I recently rebooted this after a several month hiatus. I'm a bit rusty, but am enjoying running around in my Jenners trying to unlock module access.

username is Knave maybe I'll see y'all online next time you're doing a get together

[Flying Dice]

Actually, I just saw you online a few hours ago! 

And yeah, that moment where we collectively realized that he wasn't shooting was an amazing cathartic release. I think it didn't even get through to our living teammate for another fifteen or twenty seconds, that's how focused he was. Certainly kept torso-twisting, haha!

e: Ah, Mining Collective Conquest, the easiest way to organization-stomp in PuG matches. Literally all you have to do is collapse on the enemy assault lance's point with your entire team and you automatically win the match (unless they did the same thing), since it ends up being 8-12 vs. 3-6 every time. Incidentally, an excellent example of why I love Stalkers. You can literally walk right into six assaults and heavies alpha-striking you, blast one or two to death, and then torso-twist your way to safety while your team follows up.

All it takes is telling people to do it and the willingness to be the first one to commit. That's rule 1 of playing a tanky assault, everybody loves shooting enemies that don't shoot back, so if you say to push somewhere and walk up front you'll usually get plenty of volunteers to blast away at all the enemies shooting you. That and a light willing to play grab-ass to distract enemies are the two most important weapons in PuG play.

The magic of OP hitboxes.

[se5a]

Oh yeah wow, I didn't realise the heatsinks on larger engines thing.
I've dropped the heatsinks on the RVN 3L and added SRM2, I might try swapping that out with streaks and seeing how that plays.

[Flying Dice]

Streak-2s are garbage. Seriously not worth the effort.

[Wiles]

Yeah. streaks are pretty bad (especially inner sphere streaks). You need lots of them for them to be useful and even then they are mostly useful against small mechs. The problem is how badly they spread damage. I was testing them out in the testing grounds and when I fired my ssrm2 at the stationary Cataphract one missile hit it in the lower left leg, the other hit it in the upper right shoulder. I wasn't even very far away from it. If you're mounting missiles SRMs are the way to go!

Edit: I picked up a Stalker 5M today. This is the loadout I've been playing with STK-5M

The PPCs and the engine size will probably change when I have more C-Bills, they just got put on because it was the best loadout I could get with the C-Bills I had left over

I tried medium lasers instead of PPCs at first but I found I never wanted to use my lasers when I was in laser range because it was better to just use my srms. So I'll probably end up putting some large lasers and more heatsinks and ammo on it when I can.

[se5a]

Yeah I noticed that. going to try dropping some armor and going srm4 instead.

[Wiles]

I think I've been playing too much MWO. I was trying out the new arena shooter Paladins and every time I was reloading I'd turn away from the enemy like I was piloting a mech and trying to spread damage by torso twisting.