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A lot of it depends on the skill of your pilots and your opponents. As you get more experienced pilots and heavier mechs the most effective tactic revolves around called shots to destroy or disable. In those situations having a lot of firepower capable of attacking on a localized spot becomes more useful, and maximizing damage per weight is ideal. That's where having MLs and SRM-6s (especially the upgraded ones with +4 damage per missile) is useful. I also prefer to put morale boosting equipment in every head slot; between the per-round bonus and the benefits of killing targets you can maintain things in perpetuity. At this point I'm fielding two types of mechs. Headhunters and damage dealers. Every now and then I field a LRM boat but for the most part it's Highlanders and an Atlas. I'm still figuring out the King Crab. The Highlanders are equipped with maximum SRM-6s, medium lasers, and maximum armor and jump jets. They can quickly take out most threats (the alpha is around 316 damage). The Atlas has the Gauss cannon and AC-10+; I love finding weapons that do 61 or more points of damage due to their headcapping potential. There's nothing more satisfying in the game than seeing a brand new 100 ton mech and the immediately blowing its head off. I also field AC-20s in some situations. I bring enough ammo to fire everything at least 10 times. It's actually gotten to the point where if it's not a SRM-6, medium laser, AC-10, or AC-20 I don't even look at it. I might mod PPCs to do 65 points of damage. I figure that would be pretty terrifying.
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May 28, 2018 17:28
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Flipswitch posted:You can do it with a Jagermech but it has paper plastered on the sides for protection. I've tried this and it honestly kind of sucks unless you get really favorable terrain. The rest of the time you'll probably wish you'd brought an LRM boat instead.
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May 28, 2018 17:34
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I have been building my mechs exactly the way I do in MWO. Full frontal armor, just enough rear armor to survive a flank, and then I fill the rest with guns. When in doubt, boating SRM6's or a bunch of Medium Lasers is always a good call.
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May 28, 2018 17:34
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:A lot of it depends on the skill of your pilots and your opponents. As you get more experienced pilots and heavier mechs the most effective tactic revolves around called shots to destroy or disable. In those situations having a lot of firepower capable of attacking on a localized spot becomes more useful, and maximizing damage per weight is ideal. That's where having MLs and SRM-6s (especially the upgraded ones with +4 damage per missile) is useful. I also prefer to put morale boosting equipment in every head slot; between the per-round bonus and the benefits of killing targets you can maintain things in perpetuity. Stalkers are hilarious for this.  This guy regularly cores out pristine assaults with a single called shot to the CT. Only problem is it's a bit slow. Maybe I'll grab some DHS from my Highlander and use the extra weight for jets. ChickenWing posted:I've been going almost exclusively with stock loadouts Don't do this, most stock loadouts are terrible. In addition to the mechbuilding tips others have posted, a really simple way to improve lot of stock mechs is by ripping out their token LRM5 or 10 or AC 2s/5s and using the weight for more max frontal armour, more heatsinks if needed, and if anything is left over, more medium lasers/SRMs. Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 17:40
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And Tyler Too! posted:I have been building my mechs exactly the way I do in MWO. Full frontal armor, just enough rear armor to survive a flank, and then I fill the rest with guns. When in doubt, boating SRM6's or a bunch of Medium Lasers is always a good call. This. 3 or more missile slots = good. Put SRMs there. At least one ton ammo per launcher. Max armour (can skimp some on the back) / jump jets. Then all the heat sinks. On 55 tons and below you'll need to compromise on either armour or heat. Mechs with only 3 movement pips have more tons for stuff. Abuse that since ranges are short. More mechs on the front line means split damage which is good. On the heavier mechs, fit whatever on the extra tons and go to town. Call shots to CT. You'll get enough salvage eventually. When you get called shot mastery start thinking about legs and heads. Focus fire. If you need to tank jump max range and brace. That's about it.
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May 28, 2018 17:49
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And Tyler Too! posted:I have been building my mechs exactly the way I do in MWO. Full frontal armor, just enough rear armor to survive a flank, and then I fill the rest with guns. When in doubt, boating SRM6's or a bunch of Medium Lasers is always a good call. when doing back armor, i usually think in multiples of 25. 25 means you can eat a single ML to the location without taking internals. Going to 45 is a waste. find some way to bump up to 50, for example.
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May 28, 2018 17:51
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InAndOutBrennan posted:Put SRMs there. At least one ton ammo per launcher. That's overkill imo. One ton per 12 tubes is usually sufficient for me. Sometimes I'll run out in longer missions but by that point it's usually just cleanup anyway. 1.5 per 12 tubes should pretty much always be enough. e: I guess it depends what stage of the game you're in. Early on when your pilots are worse shots and you don't have the called shot upgrades you'll need more, later you need less.
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May 28, 2018 17:52
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How do you guys even manage armor in this game? I tell it to max armor and it puts way more on the back and not much on the front, so I try to manually adjust it but of course I can only do multiples of 5 and the max armor button puts everything in not multiples of 5 so then I have wasted space and if I get it close and just hit max armor the game ignores me and resets it to whatever it wants.
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May 28, 2018 17:54
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Wafflecopper posted:That's overkill imo. One ton per 12 tubes is usually sufficient for me. Sometimes I'll run out in longer missions but by that point it's usually just cleanup anyway. 1.5 per 12 tubes should pretty much always be enough. Fair point. But since most time I'm all the missiles I'm nervous about running out.
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May 28, 2018 17:56
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counterfeitsaint posted:How do you guys even manage armor in this game? I tell it to max armor and it puts way more on the back and not much on the front, so I try to manually adjust it but of course I can only do multiples of 5 and the max armor button puts everything in not multiples of 5 so then I have wasted space and if I get it close and just hit max armor the game ignores me and resets it to whatever it wants. I never used that button. I just manually maxed out frontal torsos, max or close to max arms, a varied but reasonable amount on legs, and a bare minimum on rear sections.
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May 28, 2018 17:56
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counterfeitsaint posted:How do you guys even manage armor in this game? I tell it to max armor and it puts way more on the back and not much on the front, so I try to manually adjust it but of course I can only do multiples of 5 and the max armor button puts everything in not multiples of 5 so then I have wasted space and if I get it close and just hit max armor the game ignores me and resets it to whatever it wants. Minus all the ones once that are not multiples of 5 and then redistribute as you see fit.
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May 28, 2018 17:57
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much like in Mechwarrior Online you will rarely be hit in the back if you're playing correctly
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May 28, 2018 17:59
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counterfeitsaint posted:How do you guys even manage armor in this game? I tell it to max armor and it puts way more on the back and not much on the front, so I try to manually adjust it but of course I can only do multiples of 5 and the max armor button puts everything in not multiples of 5 so then I have wasted space and if I get it close and just hit max armor the game ignores me and resets it to whatever it wants. Look at the numbers, not the bars. The back armor bars are bigger because the back has a lower maximum, so proportionally it looks like more.
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May 28, 2018 18:04
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does btml allow mod switching at launch, like say the xcom2 custom launcher? i want to play around with some mods but I don't want to have to manually flipflop mod configs to play MP.
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May 28, 2018 18:10
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Awesome advice, thanks folks. I've been burning out a bit on this game because of the aforementioned badness, plus a tendency to gently caress up my angles and get my robits exposed to literally every LRM20 on the map plus some PPCs for spice. I've also been leaving stock armour values and using armour autobalance, which sounds like it is maybe not the greatest idea. I'll give things another shake tonight and see what I can make happen.
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May 28, 2018 18:11
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ChickenWing posted:I've also been leaving stock armour values and using armour autobalance, Max front armour, always. Armour is love, armour is life
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May 28, 2018 18:12
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Wafflecopper posted:
Counterpoint stock mechs are fine really, like you can easily complete the game using nothing but stock mechs. Im just upgrading parts and some modifications if a mech gets wrecked and I need to rebuild it.
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May 28, 2018 18:30
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Flipswitch posted:Cyclops look awesome though, there is that. Cataphract's production year is 3025 on the dot.
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May 28, 2018 19:07
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Aramoro posted:Counterpoint stock mechs are fine really, like you can easily complete the game using nothing but stock mechs. Im just upgrading parts and some modifications if a mech gets wrecked and I need to rebuild it. I guess if your metric for fine is "it's possible to beat the game with them" then sure. But decently-built custom mechs are objectively better and sticking to stock builds is a self-imposed challenge mode and not good advice for someone who's having trouble with the game.
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May 28, 2018 19:14
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Wafflecopper posted:I guess if your metric for fine is "it's possible to beat the game with them" then sure. But decently-built custom mechs are objectively better and sticking to stock builds is a self-imposed challenge mode and not good advice for someone who's having trouble with the game. To be fair, he did say he was having trouble building good mechs, and keeping them stock is technically a solution to that problem.
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May 28, 2018 19:15
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True but if he can get good at building mechs by following advice from this thread then that'd be a better solution
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May 28, 2018 19:17
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:To be fair, he did say he was having trouble building good mechs, and keeping them stock is technically a solution to that problem. you're not wrong let me tell you about my 1xPPC, 1xML, 1xLRM10(15?) cent that's below max armour by somewhere between 1.5-2 tons 
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May 28, 2018 19:21
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Many stock mechs are fine, but you gotta get rid of that center torso ammo because that's never a good idea. And switching all the back armor to multiples of 25.
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May 28, 2018 19:22
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Wafflecopper posted:I guess if your metric for fine is "it's possible to beat the game with them" then sure. But decently-built custom mechs are objectively better and sticking to stock builds is a self-imposed challenge mode and not good advice for someone who's having trouble with the game. Ah i read him s trouble was not being able to build good mechs. Which is a different problem than having trouble with the game. If you just play the game stock, upgrading components you'll get a good feeling for which weapon configs work for you and which don't. Custom building mechs does make the game alot easier but if you're having trouble with the game with good stock mechs then you just need to practice more. Obviously if you're trying to get through woth nothing but stock blackjacks you're going to have issues, but the stock hunchies are good mechs.
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May 28, 2018 19:49
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ChickenWing posted:Hello goons, I am Dumb/Stupid/Bad and cannot figure out this whole Building a Not Garbage Mech thing. I've been going almost exclusively with stock loadouts, which has been helping, and sometimes I read an idea in the thread e.g. make the shithawk a puncher/srmer, make the cent a srmer and do that and it works out okay but I am absolute rear end at looking at a mech and saying "hmm yes this mech needs exactly one extra ton of armour in the butt, a laser in the knee and an AC/2 in the head to be Optimal" Okay, time for general mech building guide/pointers: Heat is management is key. At their core, mechs are machines that build up heat as they do the damage they need to blow up other mechs, with a point at which they start taking self-damage and another where they stop working entirely and become vulnerable. Being heat-neutral or generating little heat is bad, because that means you aren't dealing as much damage as you could afford to soak with your Heat Capacity throughout a battle. Generating too much heat OTOH means that you'll be finding yourself turning off certain weapons to avoid cooking - at which point these weapons essentially become wasted tonnage that could've instead been more armor, or heatsinks that help your equipment keep going for longer. My rule of thumb is ~20 heat build up (4 bars on the mech screen), which allows firing all weapons (Alpha Strike) 4-5 times before shutdown in a standard environment. The other side of heat management is damage efficiency or, how good you're at actually dealing damage for all that heat you're generating. This can be calculated on a per-weapon basis: [Weapon Damage]/[[Weapon Weight]+[Ammo Weight]+[Heat/3]] Heat/3? That's the weight in tons of the Heatsinks required to counteract the heat a weapon generates. With this simple formula you can derive a few good mech building factoids: - LLs and PPCs are complete garbage at dealing damage relative to their weight+heat. - AC/2s and AC/10s are also really bad. - However, PPCs deal respectable stability damage and a slight accuracy debuff, so they have some edge-case uses. - Likewise, while awkward to fit, AC/10+ single-player variants are the smallest weapon that can effectively headshot an undamaged (unguarded) mech, and for some otherwise decent mechs it's the only path to more halfway-efficient damage short of going all in on AC/20s. - Either way, any build that uses the above weapons is automatically suspect. AC/2s in particular are irredeemable. What about other weapons? Well they range from decent to good, and can be ranked thus: MG (if 2+) Small Laser SRM4 SRM6 Medium Laser LRM15 LRM5 LRM20 AC/20 LRM10 AC/5 As you can tell at a glance, short-range weapons are generally better at dealing damage, so a good brawl mech is going to have plenty of M hardpoints, Support hardpoints if it wants to get to knife-fight range, and E hardpoints are a good general use of tonnage for MLasers. A long-range support mech wants 2 or 3 M hardpoints for LRM20/15. Avoid LRM10s if you can help it. Ballistics? AC/5 is a decent weapon that can be fit on a brawl config for continuous medium-range punching power while cooling off/closing in, or paired with a PPC on a sniping build that fields no other weapons (this is the PPC edge case). AC/20 trades the efficiency of missiles for pinpoint all-or-nothing damage dealing, which is an acceptable exchange given the tactical value of knocking off components. "But hey, damage isn't everything!  PPCs are good because-"Well, the other major consideration besides HP damage is Stability damage, and it so happens that Missiles are absurdly good at it. Seriously, with the + stab variants it's just completely busted. There's also one PPC variant that does 50 stability damage and I think it's the only such weapon worth using, but +stab LRMs are absurd. We could also argue range, but LRMs work just fine even at close range, and the other mid-range gun, the AC/5, has the same range profile and practically the same damage as PPCs, while being significantly cooler. "White-room numbers aren't everything!  My 2xLL Dragon is by far my-"Making the most out of your heat/tonnage fits any playstyle. If you're using bad mechs with bad weapons, then you're just fielding lovely builds and playing your own loving style wrong. Now, with weapons more or less taken care of, let's look at other equipment: Armor: max all front armor, then as you need more tonnage for equipment shave a bit off the legs, a bit off the side torsos, a bit off the arms in that order. Legs can be your least armored part, but don't go into battle without pants, either. Completely stripping an unused arm/torso sort of works in skirms, but in singleplayer it means extra repair time/money, and through proper positioning you can pivot an armored side to soak damage without risk to your important/exposed bits. Rear armor should be an afterthought - it's only there to protect you from your mistakes, because the enemy should never ever get rear shots in. Get-in-there builds can benefit from some back armor if they expect to take the occasional potshot when they get close to enemy formations, but for most mechs you just wanna use it to round up to the nearest ton or half ton. Don't go below 70% front armor, either. Ammunition: aim for 10-12 shots worth. Stick it in the legs, maybe on the arm holding the gun if it's not a rare variant and there's nothing else there. Don't worry too much about it exploding; once half spent a given ton no longer cooks off when crit. But still, never, ever, stick it on the center or side torsos. Never. JJs: they're nice. Particularly for Light/Mediums in the early stages of the game, they help immensely with positioning and evasion for comparatively little tonnage investment. Harder to justify once you get into Heavies and Assaults, where the most effective tactic is to anchor up and soak damage through Bulwark, but there are still mechs that benefit from the extra mobility like the Grasshopper or other consummate strikers that want sweet sweet backshots. Heatsinks: all of your spare tonnage generally goes here. Now, to the chassis themselves: Initiative is determined by class. Maximum armor is determined by total weight. Free tonnage is a function of total tonnage - engine weight (faster mech == heavier engine), so it's variable but heavier mechs generally have more room. In essence, this means that mechs on the lower end of their weight class tend to be bad. - Firestarter and Jenner are the only lights worth a drat. The Panther is serviceable, but it's such a slow mech you're better off with a 45+ ton Medium. Everything else just doesn't have the free tonnage to pull its weight in a drop. - The Cicadas are garbage. The CDA-2A has less room than a Spider what the gently caress - The Blackjack, Vindicator and Trebuchet are serviceable but have less free tonnage than the rest of the mediums that match their respective speeds. - The Dragon and Quickdraws have the distinction of being at the lower end of their class, at the breakpoint where Jump Jets double in weight, possessing oversized engines to go fast, and ending up with practically the same stats as the entire category of mechs that preceded them yet acting an initiative step later. No reason to use them. - Despite its name, the Awesome-8Q doesn't have the hardpoints to make effective use of its free weight. All-Energy means the only way upwards in damage from heat-neutral mlas boating is with PPCs and LLs, so, garbage. - The other Awesome, the Victor, the Zeus and the Battlemaster, all suffer from being essentially Orions that act an initiative phase later. With only 3.5 extra tons of room over even the 65toners, it's better to just stick to heavies. - The Banshees are super heavy mechs with a super heavy engine, leaving them an anemic amount of usable room. You can't do anything good with them. Nothing. If you want a punchy mech, take a Grasshopper. I won't get into the nitty gritty of which are the better chassis, as that mostly becomes evident from following the weapon guidelines, but I'll point out that the Firestarter and Grasshopper are unique mechs in how many support hardpoints they have. Equip them with MGs/SLas, and they'll murder anything that they stand in front of. Lastly, pilot building is easy: take Bulwark. Master Tactician is very good, Breaching Shot+MultiTarget is decent, Ace Pilot+Evasive is situational, but you always want Bulwark. Eventually you'll be facing enough enemies that they'll just strip away your evasion through sensor lock or weight of fire, so you want a defense that keeps working through that, and that's Bulwark's 50% damage reduction. You take position with Vigilance or let the enemy come to you, and subsequently anchored in place you trade blows (with the occasional relocating or pivoting) till the enemy OpFor is gone.
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May 28, 2018 19:52
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Wolverines are pretty great mechs even stock. I'm running two right now in my primary lance (K and R versions) and they're great. I need to upgrade my mechs to at least heavies though, I have one Cataphract that I salvaged somehow. I have the whole map unlocked thanks to a mod, is there anyplace in particular I should hop to other than "worlds with SLDF/inner sphere tech"
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May 28, 2018 19:53
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I put SRMs on drat near everything because stunlocking a mech with knockdowns and a lucky head hit is an easy way to get 3/3 salvage. But I have to agree, LLs and PPCs are anemic as hell and an overall waste of tonnage. If I need to hit something at a distance the LRMs have me covered.
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May 28, 2018 20:13
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It's amazing what dropping the heat a few points on LLs and PPCs does for their usability.
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May 28, 2018 21:09
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Is the SRM2 actually worth runing? I have an LRM5++ crammed into my Grasshoppers head but the SRM2 seems kinda pants.
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May 28, 2018 22:08
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Flipswitch posted:Is the SRM2 actually worth runing? I have an LRM5++ crammed into my Grasshoppers head but the SRM2 seems kinda pants. Nope. You can stick an SRM4 in there, though.
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May 28, 2018 22:20
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SRM2s are as pointless now as they ever were. Use the tonnage for literally anything else.
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May 28, 2018 22:23
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This sucks. I just got a head shot kill on a king crab but after selecting my salvage for the mission my game moves to where I see the argo floating but I can't see the menu on the left and I can't actually do anything. The argo just spins slowly forever. I tried replaying the mission and it happens every time.
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May 28, 2018 22:55
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So I installed a mod that quintuples my mission payout because the recursive loop of damaged mech > repair > injured pilot > replacement merc > wait forever > financial report > mission > repeat is the loving worst. This game is super punishing early on. I don't want to be a loving accountant, I want to stomp poo poo in my giant robots. The game is fun now!
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May 29, 2018 01:08
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For people using the no forced difficulty spike mod thingy, does the difficulty get hard before everything opens up? I have 2 story missions left and I never see assaults. I did the edit for more missions and bigger difficulty range per system, but I never see anything over 3.5 stars. Luckily I got a King Crab before I used the mod.
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May 29, 2018 01:29
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I wish my favourite medium mech, the Crab, wasn't restricted to the space phone operators
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May 29, 2018 01:36
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My dumbass mercs keep coring out the mechs I actually want. 
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May 29, 2018 02:06
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Vasudus posted:Wolverines are pretty great mechs even stock. I'm running two right now in my primary lance (K and R versions) and they're great. They are great, but not "Pay 6.5 million C-bills for one now that I'm fighting assault mechs" great  For all the talking up MW4 Merc's nickel and dime fees. That game was a million times more casual on the player for the economy and loot. All the Gauss rifles I want with my spare pocket change, what a space country. Yes please for going all in on "Make it more like MW4 mercs-" for HBS Btech economy. I want to buy and sell literally dozens of heavy mechs on a whim to go shopping for 3-4 more store bought assault mechs I won't even use. Not be in the endgame and still ignore full mechs for sale because the price model is just that absurd for a setting where I'll be fighting a dozen+ of them by the end of the moth, if they are even considered heavy enough to spawn as a pirate anymore. Section Z fucked around with this message at 02:22 on May 29, 2018 |
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May 29, 2018 02:18
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KDdidit posted:For people using the no forced difficulty spike mod thingy, does the difficulty get hard before everything opens up? I have 2 story missions left and I never see assaults. I did the edit for more missions and bigger difficulty range per system, but I never see anything over 3.5 stars. Luckily I got a King Crab before I used the mod. I dunno which version of the mod you're using...I picked it up early before it got the full mod treatment and just have a couple of .rars full of files that I downloaded manually. Nevertheless, I'd have a look at your SimGameConstants.json and make sure that you've got: code:...rather than the 2 I think it starts at. That'll get you a wider variety of missions. For that matter the following set of changes overall worked really well for me: code:Just be aware that if its still early days a lot of the high skull missions will be unavailable until you kiss that faction's rear end enough for them to let you do the good jobs. Not a problem if you're hanging around in the Restoration since they love you anyway, could be difficult if you're in Taurian or unaffiliated space. I ended up doing a bunch of jobs for Davion at minimum pay and salvage to boost my rep up with them.
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May 29, 2018 04:01
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So I'm getting kind of bored with insta-coring everything I bump into and doing weird builds with all the spare parts I have laying around. Which highlander is the best to make a dedicated DFA-bot out of? It seems like it isn't the star league one somehow? Or is there a robot that has a better damage-to-self-damage ratio I should look at?
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May 29, 2018 05:35
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Filthiest Alf posted:So I'm getting kind of bored with insta-coring everything I bump into and doing weird builds with all the spare parts I have laying around. Which highlander is the best to make a dedicated DFA-bot out of? It seems like it isn't the star league one somehow? Or is there a robot that has a better damage-to-self-damage ratio I should look at? The good news is minus DFA self damage leg mods apply to each leg's self damage, so they pretty much count double. E.g., for a -20 Self DMG mod, each leg's damage is reduced by 20, for 40 reduction total. With two -30 DMG mods (12 tons total), you can get -120 damage on your DFA. -50 damage is still a pretty solid combo for 10 tons. A 55-tonner like a Griffin or Shadowhawk does 70 damage per leg (enough to headcap), can get 6 evasion pips, 3 base initiative, and has enough room to strap on about two medium lasers once you get near-max armor and a couple supports. With the DFA mods, each leg will take 10 damage in the attack, so you can do this for days with 130 leg armor. A 65-tonner like a Thunderbolt is another good candidate, since you can get 160 outgoing (80x2) and take 40 back (20x2), with 150 leg armor and 3 support hardpoints. If stuck with only a -50 self DMG configuration, strap on a Large Laser, 3x Mediums, 3 MGs, and 4 jets on a Thunderbolt-5SE, have a good time. A Grasshopper can technically do this with more support hardpoints, but the larger outgoing DFA damage (90x2) means each leg is taking 30 or 40 damage apiece. I prefer using Grasshoppers in the murderbug configuration, which the leg mods would get in the way of more MLs and heat sinks. Absolutely don't put stability damage arm mods on your DFA bot - it also applies to your stability self damage.
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May 29, 2018 08:26
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