MechWarrior Online Thread



  • @djls45 Yay! Don't feel bad, the game has an enormous learning curve.

    Adder's a weird one. It's a light mech, but purposefully not a scout. I don't know what trials are available right now, but if you do all the tutorials you end up with ... 8? million bucks, which is enough to buy a light for yourself.



  • @blakeyrat

    Current List of Trial 'Mechs (I don't know when or to what they'll change up next.)
    Light
    • Adder
    • Jenner IIC
    • Raven
    • Wolfhound
    Medium
    • Hunchback IIC
    • Kintaro
    • Nova
    • Phoenix Hawk
    Heavy
    • Ebon Jaguar
    • Hellbringer
    • Orion
    • Warhammer
    Assault
    • Dire Wolf
    • Kodiak
    • Mauler
    • Stalker

    Academy Training Report

    I've done most of the trials. I have silver for the nav-running one (got it in one attempt), but I've done most of the others, except I haven't cleared the running with a critical center torso, the mobile target practice, or the defend-against-a-charge practice yet;
    because I am not steady enough for lasers, especially at long range (plus the cooldown on them makes them hard to shoot quickly enough, even in chain-fire) - (PPCs are neat, but have a cooldown that is WAAAYY too slow to allow any misses);
    I am not accurate enough with ballistics, especially at long range with the bullet drop and having to lead the target) - (and Gauss rifles are just really weird to use, and have a terribly slow cooldown as well.);
    and missiles (especially LRMs) take too long to lock on and I haven't learned the amount of lead needed for dumb-fire rockets (similar to ballistics).

    With the the matches I've played so far and the C-bills from the Academy training, I currently have 7,237,998 C-bills. That's probably enough to buy a 'Mech or two, or a 'Mech and outfit it.

    The Quick Play Matchmaking Status hover-box recommends Light 'Mechs for shorter wait times, and I kinda like what I understand is the idea of them, but I think a medium or heavy might better fit what I think my playstyle tends to be. I like to either hang back and snipe at targets or charge into the middle and just blast away at one or two targets while everyone else wales away at me (hopefully my teammates are following up and attacking while I tank for a bit). (I should probably not charge in like that, but... ๐Ÿคทโ™‚)



  • @djls45 Urbanmechs are only like 1.1 million. ;)



  • @djls45 Novas I think are decently expensive, but outfit one with 12 small lasers and you can out-DPS most assault mechs. (The catch is they're also slow, so closing to your target can be difficult.)

    All those assaults are solid, except the Stalker, but the trials usually have really stupid builds.



  • @blakeyrat said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    @djls45 Urbanmechs are only like 1.1 million. ;)

    And they're probably great practice for keeping track of which direction the legs are pointing or for Parthian tactics. :D


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    Never tried MRMs before, how do they work?

    I haven't played this, but in the tabletop game, the MRM mechanic was essentially "huge volleys of missiles, terrible accuracy," with the explanation being that in order to pack that many missiles into a launcher, they had to eliminate a lot of superfluous hardware, such as the targeting system.

    How well do they actually work under field conditions in MWO?



  • @masonwheeler According to MoltenMetal, they have too much spread/splash damage to be worth much to a good player. When targeting the center torso to wear down the armor and structure to get a precision kill, "wasting" damage against side torsos, arms, and legs just slows the attack.

    For a newbie like me, they're probably pretty decent, since my attacks would be all over anyways, so having a wider "cone of damage" helps to actually apply damage to my target.



  • @masonwheeler said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    How well do they actually work under field conditions in MWO?

    From my experience, roughly equivalent to a LBX of the same damage rating, but the spread happens over 0.5 seconds instead of immediately.

    But it's incredibly light, which makes it really nifty for smaller mechs.

    But yes, there is a lot of spread.



  • 0_1512794825169_20171208204615_1.jpg

    I like how your score frames your busted-ass mech in the middle of the screen.



  • @masonwheeler said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    I haven't played this, but in the tabletop game, the MRM mechanic was essentially "huge volleys of missiles, terrible accuracy," with the explanation being that in order to pack that many missiles into a launcher, they had to eliminate a lot of superfluous hardware, such as the targeting system.

    BattleTech missiles (other than Streaks) have a targeting system?



  • @gurth said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    BattleTech missiles (other than Streaks) have a targeting system?

    LRMs obviously do, although it requires a radar lock from the team's radar network. But you can do stuff like launch your LRMs from 1000m, duck behind a hill, then time your radar lock so you get lock with the LRMs are only about 100m away, then watch your beautiful little missiles juke and jive and hit the target from weird angles they don't expect.



  • @blakeyrat Must be one of the differences between the video game(s) and the real one :) Missiles in BT have always come across to me as pretty much the equivalent of firing buckshot.



  • @gurth It's true that you can't focus on specific parts of the mech with missiles (or LBX shotguns, for that matter.) So your damage gets spread.

    For something like a Raven, being about to do 20 damage (spread) for 40 shots is still punching way above its weight-range. And once the armor's gone, each missile in that volley gets a crit chance individually. More precise weapons, like PPCs or Gauss, get only one crit chance.



  • @blakeyrat Sounds quite different from the wargame. In that, you first roll to see how many missiles hit out of a salvo; LRMs are divided into groups of five and you roll a hit location for each of those, while with SRMs, each missile gets its own hit location (not sure about MRMs, and I donโ€™t feel like looking it up). Each hit has a 1-in-36 chance (2 on 2D6) of a critical hit regardless of remaining armour, and once the armour is gone, thereโ€™s a chance of a critical for each separate hit on the internal structure โ€” so SRMs work well for that, but LRMs only have one chance per group of five.

    LB-X autocannon were nicknamed โ€œcrit-seekersโ€ because you rolled to find the number of hits, and then each of those caused one point of damage to a separately rolled hit location. Thus, with an LB 20-X you might (on a lucky roll) cause twenty hit location rolls, each with a 1-in-36 chance of a critical. OTOH, a PPC, laser, gauss rifle, or similar will only ever cause at most a critical hit to a single location.



  • @gurth I care not about the board game. Never played it. Never plan to.



  • @blakeyrat Just offering an explanation of the difference in mechanics between the computer and physical games, is all.



  • 0_1513397138925_20171215200435_1.jpg

    Stalker,

    2x Heavy PPC
    2x Large Laser
    1x Laser AMS
    "Light" 300 engine



  • 0_1513487233525_20171216210557_1.jpg

    I swapped Stalker. Put the Heavy PPC on the one with ECM, the 3FB. Really digging it. Heavy PPCs hit HARD when you're firing two at once.

    Build:

    0_1513487289858_20171216210800_1.jpg

    I put the 6 Large Laser build on the 3F variant. Somehow the 3FB has more equipment weight available (how?) so I put the Light 300 engine on the 3F. EDIT: I guess when I give them the same armor, they have the exact same equipment weight.



  • @blakeyrat While I was rejiggering my Stalker, I noticed that PPCs get fucked in the new skill tree. The laser bonuses don't apply to them (they're energy weapons, but not lasers), and the ballistic bonuses also don't apply to them (they're kind of ballistic weapons, but have unlimited ammo)... so. There aren't any PPC-specific boosts.


  • ๐Ÿšฝ Regular

    @blakeyrat Well then. That's really shitty for PPC builds. Like my Summoner...



  • @erufael Eh; the skilltree's really shitty anyway. So that's just one more shitty aspect to it.

    Given the range of PPCs, maybe take all the weapon skillpoints off and use them instead to get Advanced Zoom.



  • Playing with my King Crab BOOBS.

    0_1513542191157_20171217122101_1.jpg

    If you max out the engine, these buffalos can actually get up to 60.9 kph, go figure.

    0_1513542198784_20171217122247_1.jpg



  • @blakeyrat Once again, the "Light" engine class saves my mech build:

    0_1513543188602_20171217123931_1.jpg

    Original version was way too hot. This thing dissipates heat a lot better.



  • Daily challenge: "get two kills or KMDDs in Quick Play"
    Me: "Challenge accepted"

    0_1513565657456_20171217185206_1.jpg

    Me, in post-game chat to the opposing team: "Haha, you guys got your asses kicked by a King Crab!"



  • @blakeyrat If I'm reading this correctly, you got 2 kills, stole 2 more, and then had 5 stolen from you?



  • @ben_lubar The really important stat honestly is KMDD (Kill Most Damage Dealt). It's not Call of Duty, where two or three shots will take down every character-- mechs are heavily armored, so the mech that caused the most damage to it should be credited with "the kill".

    Solo kill means you have both the KMDD and the Killing Blow on a mech. (It's not really a "solo kill", usually another mech will land some hits too, although it could be in theory.)

    Kill Assist just means you did some damage to a mech that later died. Not a useful stat. If you have LRMs, you almost always have a kill assist on every single enemy mech just because of how the weapon works.

    The reason that King Crab has more Killing Blows than KMDDs is because I was "running" (at 60.9 kph) around mopping up, and with the two Heavy PPCs I think I had the strongest weapons left functional.

    Anyway the real point is: King Crabs really suck, so even doing reasonably well in one is notable.


  • ๐Ÿšฝ Regular

    @blakeyrat Yeah, usually they're really big, slow targets, given their torso.



  • @erufael Most assaults are big tempting targets to lights and fast mediums, but the Atlas, Dire Wolf and King Crab seem to go out of their way to be clumsy.

    Unlike the Atlas and Dire Wolf, the King Crab has a really shitty weapon-load. You can put 6 AC5 on a Dire Wolf.


  • ๐Ÿšฝ Regular

    @blakeyrat Yeah an Atlas or Dire Wolf is not something I enjoy facing head-on. xD They have the potential to put out a LOT of firepower.



  • @blakeyrat said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    There aren't any PPC-specific boosts.

    Wouldn't a targeting computer help with that?
    I guess you'd have to drop something from your build. I don't know if the trade-off would be worth it....



  • @djls45 said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    Wouldn't a targeting computer help with that?

    Yeah but targeting computers take up weight and slots, and skilltree skills do not.


  • sekret PM club

    I just reinstalled this yesterday or so and holy crap I do not remember the mechbay/launcher thing being that big of a pain in the arse to deal with. Maybe it's just me though.

    Gonna have to play with it and see if I can't make something decent out of the founders' mechs I have laying around...



  • @e4tmyl33t The UI is atrocious, even by video game standards.

    My favorite is that in all the social menus:

    1. You can only perform tasks using contextual menus
    2. But right-clicking doesn't bring up the contextual menus
    3. Only LEFT-clicking does

    It's hard to even imagine what the fuck the guy who designed that was thinking.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    While I was rejiggering my Stalker



  • My little sniper Urbie. Would it be better to have the LB 2-X AC or an AC/2? Or drop it for another ERLL, an AMS, and some LMGs or something?

    0_1513641248785_12eabda2-2b2c-463e-bb3c-0507da414642-image.png



  • @djls45 I sold my urbie.

    Do you have enough weight for a second large laser? That's probably what I'd do.


  • sekret PM club

    Well, dived back in and did a pair of matches, one in my stock Awesome and one in my founders' Catapult.

    Awesome was expectedly beefy, and I did manage to get a solo kill and an assist before getting my arse blown apart.

    Either the stock Catapult I have is a ball of shite or I'm doing it wrong, because either I was too far away to hit anything with the LRM 15s it had, or I was getting my tits blown off by an entire enemy lance. No kills, no assists, but a little damage on an Orion, I think it was. I swore the Catapult used to be a long-range missile delivery platform to be used with a spotter, but those fuckin LRMs were just blowing up halfway to the target midair...


  • ๐Ÿšฝ Regular

    @e4tmyl33t
    @blakeyrat had a Catapult variant that he loved to use. I forget if it's somewhere in this thread or not.



  • @erufael The founder's is an C1.

    The best Catapult, and ton-for-ton best mech in the game, is the Catapult K2. And this is the best K2:

    0_1513660502124_20171218211426_1.jpg

    C1 ain't bad though.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    I swore the Catapult used to be a long-range missile delivery platform to be used with a spotter, but those fuckin LRMs were just blowing up halfway to the target midair...

    LRMs are still good, but keep in mind there's really not much point in firing them over about 750m range. (Technically they can hit to 1100m, but the travel time for that is longer than the time you'll likely keep your target lock.) EDIT: and of course IS LRMs have a minimum range of... 160m? IIRC? Make sure you check the minimum and maximum range of all your weapons before you drop; the most common piloting error I see is people firing weapons when WAY out of range.

    Here's my Founders:

    0_1513660838276_20171218212000_1.jpg

    TAG lets you acquire your own targets, handy when your teammates are being idiots or if you're out of UAVs.


  • ๐Ÿšฝ Regular

    Finally updated my game and took my Summoner out for a spin. Holy crap I had forgotten how fun this Mech is. It can take a stupid amount of damage, its quick, and God I love PPC's!


  • sekret PM club

    @erufael I love everything about PPCs except their heat generation :/

    I decided to spend some of the 11k+ MC I had from the founders package or wherever I got it and picked up a Timber Wolf-D variant (with the pair of PPCs and 4x Streak SRM-6s). Mostly because fuck everything, Timber Wolves are iconic and I wanted to own one, even if it was terrible.

    I really, really suck (or I'm really, really unlucky). Hell, one match I just had a few minutes ago, I took a SINGLE PPC shot to the chest and it nearly disabled my left torso and arm with critical damage. Second match was a capture point-style and I made an oopsie and blundered into an entire lance capturing a point without realizing I didn't have any backup behind me. I was quickly shown the error of my ways.

    Now to see if I can cram an AMS in this thing somewhere...



  • @e4tmyl33t said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    Hell, one match I just had a few minutes ago, I took a SINGLE PPC shot to the chest and it nearly disabled my left torso and arm with critical damage.

    Was it an ammo explosion from those Streak missiles?

    Also the new Heavy PPCs really do pack a whollop.



  • 0_1513743286589_20171219201259_1.jpg

    Easy challenge today, get 5 kill assists. I got 6 in my Stalker 3FB and I wasn't even really trying.



  • @blakeyrat said in MechWarrior Online Thread:

    @djls45 I sold my urbie.

    Do you have enough weight for a second large laser? That's probably what I'd do.

    I tried 2 lasers, but it didn't work out too well for me. Too much heat.

    I traded them out for a pair of Light PPCs and a pair of MGs, and I think I'm doing better with that for a sort of sniper role.



  • 0_1513746415125_20171219210627_1.jpg

    I bedazzled my King Crab.



  • Proof Founders ain't a bad mech:

    0_1513748315922_20171219213808_1.jpg


  • sekret PM club

    After futzing with my Founder's Catapult (removed the stock LRM 15s, put on LRM 10s with Artemis, added an active sensor and an AMS, changed all the armor to ferro and the skeleton to endo, and added a heavy laser to the center torso) I had a pretty good match this morning.

    0_1513793316499_20171220130047_1.jpg



  • @e4tmyl33t Nice.

    Catapult's a great chassis. Keep in mind the C1 will take jump jets, too, if you're the jump-y kind of player. (The K2 will not however.)


  • sekret PM club

    @blakeyrat Yeah, for now I've left the jump jets that came with it in to see how often I use them. If I end up not using them much, I may rip them out for more room for LRM ammo or something.


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