I just led an enemy mech on a 4 turn-long chase using my LRM mech during which the enemy mech did nothing but move. Of course to trigger this activity your mech has to be out of range of the enemy to begin with and the enemy has to choose to target it in preference to other mechs. The enemy mech passed up 4 turns of opportunity to move elsewhere and take an immediate shot at one of my other mechs. During each of these turns my LRM mech was able to fire, so it was a very useful tactic.
So I melee’d an enemy mech, cored it…
rng works for me too sometimes.
I’m happy.
edit- I outfitted a captured Wolverine with just lasers. About to test it now.
RichVR
2748
Still haven’t done Smithon. Futzing around doing missions and finally got my first heavy. An Orion. Still loving the game. I have two parts of a King Crab. Part three nowhere to be found.
Orions are fantastic, imho. As for King Crab parts, I ran into a similar issue early in the game; I found a couple parts for a Zeus and never found another until waaaaaay later in the game after I cored one (at which point, the Zeus really wasn’t anything special). But a King Crab? Always special :)
I found one part of a Highlander and an Awesome for sale, so I took them.
Any ideas where to go to get the rest?
I’m busy grinding for more experience and better mechs, and I have acquired a Thunderbolt, 60 tonnes iirc…
Anyway it has like 8 laser hardpoints, so I have respecced it into full medium lasers, loads of armour, 4 jump jets and loads of heat sinks.
Lasers are not great, but when you have 8 of them on something so heavy, then suddenly they are great.
I added it up and I think it can do 220 damage if everything hits, which ofcourse it never does, but it’s still respectable.
Sharpe
2751
Medium laser spam is a viable strategy for quite a few front line mechs, although I agree with one of the posters above that SRM spam is slightly better for close range fighting.
Grasshoppers and Black Knights are my preferred Medium Laser sluggers and both perform extremely well in that role.
Thraeg
2752
Yeah, I just got my first Zeus, and it seems particularly underwhelming among its 80T weight class, as the Victor is faster with the same amount of available tonnage, while the Awesome has the same speed but substantially more payload.
In general, it feels to me like bigger engines on assault mechs just aren’t worth the tonnage they require. Going from a Battlemaster (85T, 4 move) to a Banshee (95T, 4 move), you actually have 5 tons less usable tonnage. And the stock (i.e. salvaged rather than the souped-up Star League version) Highlander (90T, 3 move) has an extra ~20T of payload over both of them, more than outweighing the extra movement in most situations.
Has anyone gotten a melee brawler specialist mech to work well? I got a lot of mileage out of melee in the early part of the campaign with Shadow Hawks, but it hasn’t seemed to scale into the later stages (using a Dragon, a Grasshopper, and most recently a Banshee). It’s effective when it works, with a good chunk of damage, a full stability bar, and often some crits or headshots from the MG batteries. But dropping from 5 to 4 movement with the heavier mechs seems to leave the enemies just barely out of melee range and making unimpressive laser volleys more often than not. Also, the damage output hasn’t quite kept pace with the full complement of guns on assault mechs, and arm mods are pretty heavy for the amount of bonus they give. And of course after making a melee attack, the mech is out front and exposed to a lot of return fire, without the benefits of Bulwark to keep it alive. And as someone mentioned, the initiative knockback on melee lost its utility once the assault mechs came out, since there’s no phase 0
Probably not much to be done about it, but it’s disappointing that I have two mechwarriors specialized in it. Though they’re both out for a few months thanks to the whole easy target problem I mentioned.
Assassination and pirate missions are your best bet. The former because the target is often in something big and the latter because pirates often have heavier mechs that are in bad shape so that for a given difficulty level, you see the mechs shifted to the heavier side.
Grasshoppers are also great for overheating enemies with their 6 flamer slots.
RichVR
2755
Minor quibble. The hit box to actually click on something, such as, Argo>Store seems to have no space above or below the buttons. I can’t count the times I went from Argo or mech bay and it just doesn’t hit. Is it just me?
I am currently running a Missile boat Orion, a PPC Blackknight with a few double heat sink, a melee speced BattleMaster and the Highlander (with many of the double heat sinks removed and an AC 5 to compliment the Gauss cannon).
I had to stop in the middle of an assasination mission with 7 heavy mechs (4 thunderbolts) and a locust, with a BattleMaster as the main target. Before I left the game, all but the BattleMaster, the locust and a Thunderbolt were down. My Orion was destroyed, but since it’s my main, I’m hoping to salvage most of it, and the my character. Hopefully I can replace the Blackknight with the 2nd BattleMaster. I know it has the same space as the black knight, but it deals more melee damage and has tougher internal structure.
Not just you. It’s indeed a hit box issue.
RichVR
2758
Your main character can’t die. But the mech can be trashed. Don’t be afraid to eject. Sometimes that’s enough to save most of your favorite mech.
Edit: Put it this way. Your favorite mech has an arm blown off. Good luck for you. It was empty or just had a ML on it. But you have torso damage. Maybe on the side of the destroyed arm. And maybe you have some firepower left. You want it to help.
OTOH the AI knows where the damage is. They are going for a hit that side for damage that hits the core and destroys the mech.
Eject. He who fights and runs away etc.
I understand, but my Orion was in a safe space, and in one turn, the arm came off, and then the center torso. It happened very quickly because the armor was rather light on the Orion.
Still, I have replacements for everything on that mech except an LRM 15 +++. As long as that survives, I am good.
Lantz
2761
Missions on Rich, Manufacturing, Inner-Sphere planets seem to have better mechs show up. Not 100% sure, trying to avoid spreadsheets until I finish the campaign.
Lantz
2762
I run a BNC-3M where I punch things occasionally to manage heat. I haven’t seen a strong use for the melee damage increasing parts. Maybe someone else has?
Thraeg
2764
Yeah, that seems like an ideal unit for it. Close some distance and fire a big salvo of energy weapons on one turn, and then punch on the next while the heat is recovering. I was doing basically the same thing with my Grasshopper before a King Crab headshotted it with an AC/20. I have the other Banshee variant, but it seems less well suited, since it’s got fewer slots of both energy and support weapons, but doesn’t have the tonnage to make good use of the ballistic slot it gets in exchange.
I think it might also help if I had specced my melee guys a bit differently too. I built them both as Brawlers, since the bonuses from Guts and Piloting were directly relevant to melee. But I think if I were doing it again, I’d go for the abilities from Tactics instead of Guts. The initiative knockback is useless against assault mechs, and if they’re standing still to benefit from Bulwark, they’re not getting into melee range. Would be more useful to be able to go first with the initiative bonus, and be able to sensor-lock to help out my LRM boat at long ranges.
Well, we need replacement arms and legs, and you got two of each…
