Yeah, I’ll gladly lose a heat sink or two for jump jets on a mech every time.
The other reason I love jump jets is the ability to set your facing at the end of the move. Right torso armour stripped? Spin and present your left side. It’s considerably more difficult to pull off when sprinting…you usually end up with your back to the enemy.
My general tips on outfitting mechs:
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The way you equip a mech for doing lots of called shots vs general combat differs. I generally have at least one mech that specializes in called shots in my lances after mid-game or so. Once I have a pilot with tactics 8 for called shot mastery anyway. The whole goal of a called shot mech is to unload maximum short range damage. Just the net damage output from an alpha strike is all I look at. Since I’m using called shots, I don’t care if it comes from one big gun or lots of little ones. In general the math works out well to use a mix of Medium Lasers and SRM +++ racks to accomplish this. Generally I’ll use a Kintaro or Battlemaster for this role, with high armor and max jump jets. Swoop in, call a CT or CT-rear shot, destroy an enemy, and then worry about cooling down and getting away later.
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Light/Medium/(and most Heavy) mechs should be specialized to be either a short range combatant or a long range combatant. Trying to do both on a mech with limited tonnage available just dilutes the effectiveness of the mech and makes something that isn’t particularly effective at either. Short range mechs should load up on the Medium/Small lasers and SRMs. Short range mechs should have jump jets so they can control the range of the fight effectively. Long range mechs should mix LRMs with a PPC or AC/5 or AC/10. In a lighter mech I’ll go with a Large Laser +++ and LRMs to save a few tons. This mech doesn’t need jump jets (though they can help), but does need enough heat sinks and ammo to fire everything just about every turn.
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An indirect fire mech is a fun, if cheesy, way to supplement your firepower. For this mech find something with 2 or 3 missile hardpoints and build it as a pure LRM platform. It will stay well back from the main fighting so stripping down the armor to something a Locust would sneer at is doable. This should free up plenty of tons for LRM racks, ammo, and heat sinks.
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In the later game, when assault mechs are common, it’s possible to do a true multirole mech that can do long range combat and short range combat. My King Crab recipe, for example, mixes a PPC, a LRM-15, 3 SRM racks. and a few medium/small lasers for a mech that can put out effective hurt at any range. The stock Highlander designs are also good examples of this, mixing a LRM with a PPC or AC and some SRM/MLs for close range punch.
I’ve found that by mid to late game, you need the ability to deliver decisive focused damage more than general damage. Unless the target is something really interesting I might want to salvage, and I have the situation overall well in hand, I just focus fire center torsos with alpha strikes or breaching shots on high-damage weapons. AC/20s are great but you have to be able to close the range. Otherwise, any AC/10 with +'s or a + PPC is good; SRMs and MLs of course in numbers work too, but I do like the punch of an autocannon for coring.
One habit I had to break was multiple targets. While there are some cases, and at least one mission, where it’s either ok or necessary, generally the rule of “take the gun out of the fight” applies. Gang up on a target, kill it, move to the next.
Multi shot is pretty cool if you have breaching shot and three big guns. Each can do full damage, and reduce Evasion.
As for range focus versus general, I like to have a least one long range weapon on each mech, so that every mech can contribute something as it moves in. My Black Knight has a PPC to back up it’s medium lasers.
On the other side, I like to have a few medium lasers on my LRM boat in case somebody gets to close. It’s a good bit of backup damage for every little tonnage, and since I only use it a few times in the game, the extra heat usually doesn’t cause too much trouble.
I’d have to disagree. The AC/20 is not good unless you spec it with a maxed out accuracy pilot, and has a + for accuracy, or spend weight to add a TTS. I have way more success with AC/5’s or 10’s if I’m going with inertial weapons.
Note that if you have mobile mechs, you can more easily take advantage of the range overlap between short and long range weapons. If you’re using LRMs that overlap may only be a hex or two, but if you’ve got PPC’s then you have a lot more depth where you can use both your long range and short range weapons at optimal accuracy.
I love that the UI gives you a detailed breakdown of the to hit calculation for each single weapon when you target an enemy. That feature really helps you learn what matters and what doesn’t.
Finally up to 4 assault mechs. Still don’t have one with good gun capacity, alas. But I did just build a mech with 4xSRM-6 and 6xML that I want to try out. Might be a bit of heat to shed, but then it’s also pretty much festooned with heat sinks.
I am still early on, only did a couple of story missions and I am running mediums and lights. I was doing ok until this stop a convoy mission, which I can’t seem to beat. The convoy is 4 fairly tough vehicles, with rockets, escorted by 3 mechs and 2 other vehicles. I only have 3 or so turns to stop them once I get to them, but I am getting destroyed. If I concentrate on the vehicles, the mechs pound me, if I concentrate on the mechs, the vehicles pound me and/or escape.
My light mech (a Spider) is useless. My mediums aren’t fast enough to get in front of the convoy.
Any tips? Just accept defeat? This is only a 1 skull mission, the others are 2 skulls. Kind of scared I screwed up my game from taking too much damage in earlier battles and not collecting more medium mechs.
You can always withdraw and wander around the easy part of the galaxy selecting only non-convoy and non-escort and non-base-defense missions (those are the three hardest, IMO) until you get a better set of mechs.
I encountered a similar ‘ambush convoy’ mission when I was full mediums and I had to abandon it. It was literally impossible to catch up to the convoys before they reached their escape point, I was only able to get a round of shots off, which is inadequate as they were more armoured than the mechs. My advice is to skip the mission and avoid similar ones, it’s just asking for frustration.
Use the Spiders to melee the vehicles. As long as they hit they’ll kill the vehicles in one shot, due to the bonus damage and single hit location.
This is how I tend to go for most of the game as well - 2 heavily armored jump jet-equipped short range folks up front, and 2 lightly armored mostly missile boats in back. I tried going with medium armor in my front line for max alpha strike damage but I have found that a front line that can survive to allow the missile boats to call in deadly salvos is more effective than pure max alpha strike. YMMV.
The vehicles aren’t killed in one melee hit from the Spider. The things are tough and hit hard, the 4 of them can severely damage or knock over the Spider before I can even kill one with it. An alpha strike from a medium will usually kill one outright, but I can’t get all the mediums there in time to prevent a loss. Especially since that would result in their mechs coming in from behind.
Are you sprinting with your Mechs? I found that sometimes it’s just critical to sprint into a better firing position than tangling with the guard mechs/vehicles. Also you have a better hit percentage from an elevated position.
Yeah, the 80t vehicles are not one-shottable by lights usually. At least, that’s been my experience. And of course, your 95% chance to melee hit attack will always miss if it’s the last chance to kill the crawler before it exits…
I’ve been running a diamond team. My one heavy is the center/point with full armor and ML loadout with Medusa as Vanguard. Move forwards, gain their attention and either sensor lock opponents or blast away when they get close. Two 55 ton mechs act as wings/flankers. Currently I like staying at a little range to use ac5s as we’re still in the part of the game where their stability damage is really nice. Finally one long range shooter using lrm. Currently a Centurion but probably the role for my second heavy.
I’ve got a 55 tonne mech (centurion?) And a 60 tonne (?) Dragon.
Both are loaded up with SRMs. Centurion also has jump jets. Dragon has more arermout but no jump jets.
I think I’ll put jump jets on the Dragon (fits the name really) and sacrifice a little armour.
Those 2 occupy the centre and hit things. They can soak up a decent amount of damage.
With the jump jets the centurion typically gets rear arc shots.
Offloading 3 SRMs and a medium laser is quite nice.
The 3Rd mech is a vindicator with double ppc and loads of heat sinks.
The enemy tend to try and take this down but it has decent armour so it can stand a few rounds. Whilst that’s happening the centurion and dragon are laying out damage.
Or they’re getting focused on and the ppc takes pot shots.
I can’t remember the name of the last mech but it has 3 LRMs iirc.
I really want to find a mech which will let me load like 8 LRMs lol.
This last mech is a long range damage dealer.
So far this setup works quite nicely.
I had a kill the convoy mission. I jump jetted the centurion around and just kept offloading SRMs and ignoring the mech escorts. Centurion could handle it.
Now that I think about it…maybe my centurion is actually a shadowhawk. Not near computer, can’t check.
The Dragon with Heavy Jump Jets has less available tonnage and deals about the same melee damage then a Shadow Hawk with Light Jump Jets, plus the Shadow Hawk moves sooner.
The 55 ton mechs are just better than the 60 ton mech after you add in Jump Jets.
On a different subject, anyone else annoyed that there are only 5 levels of initiative? If I knock an assault mechs on its ass, it’s annoying that they stand up right away. Hopefully there is some thought to adding to the levels of initiatives.