Thanks, this worked.
There is one mech left I really want (don’t need just want) Victor-VTRE-9B. It has the most ballistic hardpoints of any Assault mech that I can see (3 of them). I still only have 1/3 and have yet to come across another piece in like 15 4-5 star missions.
I want to see what it’s like to have a fantastically armored version of a Jagermech. Seems fun, cause I hate it when I start getting sniped by a 2x AC/2/5 + 2x LRM Jager.
I find this game hard to fire up during the week. But then I get into it and can’t put it down. So the worst of both worlds.
Seriously struggling to find a good layout for a Dragon. I want to like the Dragon, because… well, dragons are cool. But to give it a decent spread of weapons, I need to strip a lot of armor. Only thing I can think of is a weird fire support hybrid (staying far away due to the weak armor).
LA (70)::::::::: AC5 + ammo
LT (80/40)::::: nada
CT (135/60):: nada
RT (80/40):::: MG + ammo, ML
RA (70)::::::::: PPC, MG
LL (90):::::::::: nada
RL (90)::::::::: nada
It’s just I can’t really justify it.
I’ve tried variations on it. About the only success I’ve had is adding armor and building it for close range/melee. Even when you first build one, the engineer tells you that he’s not going to lie to you and tell you that it’s a good mech.
I feel your pain but sometimes you just have to embrace that the mechs you love are trash and field them out of love. I have fielded tons of stock mechs with LLs or obvious heat problems since like 75% of maps seem to be on hot environments for absolutely no good reason except it bums me out to immediately turn everything into MLs, LRMs, MLs, armor, HS, and MLs.
Take out the PPC, put small lasers and medium lasers. Put a fast pilot on him and keep him moving, its a really fast mech and he has good melee damage for some back side hits.
He was my first heavy mech and i kept using it for a long time until it died :(
Yeah, that’s one of my little niggling complaints with this game. Their attempts to re-balance SRM and some of the ACs to make them more potent vs their counterparts in the original tabletop game have left laser weapons as second class citizens. Medium lasers are decent secondary armaments just due to light weight but an all energy mech is super hard to pull off in this game. Heck even medium lasers start looking weak when compared to SRM-6+++ models that can put out 72 damage a volley. That’s better than 2 ML +++s for less heat and only a couple more tons.
If they ever do an expansion, I think they could fix it by introducing some custom bonuses for the +/++/+++ laser variants. If I ran across a LL that had +15 dmg and -10 heat that would start to make lasers real attractive. Or they can make double heatsinks widely available. That solves a lot of energy weapon problems too.
Get in there and mod it up! This game is remarkably easy to mod if you’re just looking at doing number changes.
Yeah! stick a screwdriver in that toy! I heartily support this attitude O7
It’s tough for designers to provide multiple weapon types and balance them well even with the limitations of the various chassis types. It’s not surprising that certain types dominate. Perhaps line of sight should be longer to make LLs and PPCs more interesting. Or perhaps provide a supercharged energy option whereby they can fire for 50% extra damage but have to take a turn off to recharge or something like that. Maybe eliminate called shots for missiles since they fire in those anime swarms anyway and are presumably self-guiding?
Yes, being able to kite with a PPC or long range weapon would be interesting.
Right now it’s not easy to do this at all, with range advantages usually eliminated in a turn, or line of sight nullifying it completely.
The Dragon is a tough one because it is very fast for the size. The engine takes up so much room and the hard points are not very conducive to modifying it.
I had some luck with putting jump jets on it, more armor, some leg/arm damage mods and stripping off all weapons except one medium laser. I turned it into a 60 ton Charger. It is great for vehicle killing and knocking big mechs off balance from melee and DFA. On a hot map it can do some serious damage as enemy mechs can not fire off all their weapons. It is a great bodyguard to a Trebuchet. As soon as an enemy mech closes the Dragon comes flying up and just beats anything nearby into the ground.
It looks like the Dragon deals more then average physical damage, so if I can grab one, I will be giving it to Behemoth.
Ah, the perennial problem of these sorts of games: we want tons of choices, but choice is the devil to balance. Couple that with the min-max nature of both the game system and the gamers, and, yeah, it’s a goat rope in some respects.
If battles lasted longer, the ammo constraints on ballistic weapons and missiles might be more limiting and enhance the value of energy weapons. If there were longer ranges, as folks have noted, things like PPCs would be more appealing perhaps. If there were better heat-management tools or more cold environments (of just fewer friggin’ desert/badlands/no atmosphere worlds), same.
I love reading the crappy BT fiction, the novels and stuff, and it always is frustrating that 'Mechs that kick ass in the stories are usually “meh” in games. Wen-Lo-Wang? Justin Xiang Allard’s champion Solaris Centurion with the Pontiac autocannon, that was the scourge of the arena? Reduced to ash by a volley of LRMs from beyond your line of sight in most games. Same with all the iconic 'Mechs from the books, the Victors, the Wolfhounds, the Dragons, etc. In nearly every BT game you end up with min-maxed models that barely resemble anything in the lore.
And don’t even get me started on OmniMechs… Though at least with the Clans, which are really already min-maxed versions, the games and the lore more closely coincided.
I don’t know if this has been posted before, but I am finding it helpful.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fnaqQv8nnYpy9gtQm75-D6fmYfNJ5u3OALSIe8ckOuo/htmlview?sle=true#
For mechs, it breaks down all the hardpoints, which you can in the game, but it also breaks out the melee damage, which does vary between the mechs.
Make it a melee mec and run main character in it. It can’t die, and you don’t feel bad when it blows up.
What is the point of MGs on a long range mech? For occasional close encounters?
To give your opponent a chance to pop the most explosive material in the known universe.
Seriously though, don’t use MGs on a long-range mech.