Keep in mind, even the every trustworthy medium laser weighs 5 tons, after you take into account the number of heatsinks necessary.
The AC 5, weighs 12 tons, after heatsinks and ammo are taken into account, and deal almost twice the damage and gave twice the range. Truly, the AC 5 is the very best weapon in the game.
Thraeg
2967
Except it’s usually a waste to bring enough heatsinks to fully cancel out the heat buildup every turn, so comparisons based on that are going to be skewed. Often there are lulls in the battle when you are repositioning, or some weapons are out of range on a given turn, or you can take advantage of water to cool down faster. My general rule of thumb was that most mechs should be able to alpha strike three straight turns without taking damage.
And you’re also forgetting to account for accuracy, with the ML getting a bonus and the AC/5 getting a penalty from recoil. And if you include ++ variants, the ML gets a 35-damage version, further widening the gulf. The AC/5 does have a solid niche with its mix of range, stability, and respectable damage, but I find that most engagements are within ML range.
RichVR
2968
Yes to @legowarrior and @Thraeg. I don’t max out heat sinks, just add enough to give me a few alphas. Then when I get heat warnings I improvise. Like I said upthread, I now have three heat exchangers. It’s funny the way it shows worse heat when you install them. But it does help.
In fact my Highlander is heat neutral with its double heat sinks. It also has 1400 armor. So I could switch one or two out and give them to other mechs. I’ll have to run the numbers.
OTOH I have a pretty good system going. We’ll see.
Heat neutral isn’t necessary, but the opportunity cost is practically the same, whether you go full heat reduction or not because you can only go over your heat threshold by a single absolute amount.
Also, stability damage and range make the AC 5 just the best weapon overall. With the AC 5, I don’t have down time between mechs, because it’s always in range of some one and I usually can keep pumping out shots every turn with pretty good accuracy, and now at only 8 heat a shot, it’s even better.
Cross post from the bargain thread!
DEAL RED ALERTS
Battletech Digital Deluxe $10.39
And its DEAD.
RichVR
2971
When you start to get AC5+++ that are +20 stab damage. Well. You know. Rock two of them with a either a SRM+++ stab or a LRM 15 or 20 +++ stab. Watch any mech fall with two attacks.
Well, not Assaults. Stability is much tougher these days.
RichVR
2973
Then go for the torso shots at 79 or so. Double damage when you kill the left or right torso. Then when they fall, hit the legs.
This is the fun thing about LRM assault mechs. Any alpha strike brings even untouched targets to unsteady status so the next attack will knock them over.
But re ACs, early in the game when I only had the occasional un-plussed AC5, they seemed worthless to me, but a bunch of plussed AC5s or AC-20s, yeah, they are very nice. And later in the game you have such high pilot accuracy bonuses you hit all the time anyway. You just also need pasting-type mechs as well, either SRM or LRMs as you may prefer. Until this latest patch energy only seemed worthwhile at the medium-level where you could cram so many MLs into something as to make the usual balanced stock mech seem anemic.
The difference is in the ability to dramatically push your heat. The old ML and SRM let you do much more dramatic damage in alpha strikes, compared to AC5s. If you could take out two or three enemy mechs in a lance out with your alphas, you could afford to take a whole turn off cooling down. You also have to take into account the 10 free heat sinks. Basically, if your load out doesn’t have the heat potential to go past the redline in 2 or 2.5 or so alphas, you’re arguably heat inefficient. Given the weight of the ACs, that’s hard to do on medium and even some heavy mechs. I definitely don’t compare weapons, 1 to 1, by adding in the weight of necessary heat sinks the way you do.
Different strategies I guess, but if a weapon doesn’t deal stability damage, then its useless to me.
As I said, I still pursue an overheat strategy, just one that revolves around the superior AC 5, rather than the dinky ML.
Also, Anyone else notice how inaccurate mechs are after they stand up? Like really really bad?
The announcement of Xenonauts 2 got me interested to finally play Xcom2 War of the Chosen which I’ve had in my backlog for a long time. Should I play it as itself, or add all those workshop items Pavonis Interactive added? When I played Xcom 2 originally it was bare bones with no DLC (long time ago).
Sorry for slight threadjack!
I used some mods on the base xcom 2 to tweak a few things (timers and katanas) but didn’t feel like I needed to do anything on WOTC and I ran through two full campaigns on that one.
Maybe someone else who has used some will chime in if they feel there are some that are a must have, I’d be interested in hearing what they are because I know at some point I’ll dive in again (I can say this much though, imho once you play xcom 2 w/ WOTC there’s no going back to play it w/o it).
This Fall, we will probably have a Battletech Tournament. We’ll need to settle on a format.
Some ideas for the Tournament -
The map selection announced in advanced. Probably randomly generated before the start of the campaign, so everyone knows.
Build your own mechs and lances. My idea is to have everyone pre build two lances before the start of the tournament, and that what you use. Basically an A squad and a B squad. This cuts down on the amount of fiddling needed between games, and the overall time it takes to set up a game.
Groupings - Created 4 divisions - everyone plays everyone in each division. The top 2 in each division moves on.
Prize - NONE!!!
I’m looking for more ideas, and after a while, I’ll put together a survey and set up a thread for the Battletech Tournament thread.
Prize - The right to claim the qt3 ultimate mechwarrior championship belt for endying glory and fame.
Tim_N
2981
Yeah, geez, what’s up with that prize. The winner should be able to call themselves “champion Mechwarrior” as their subtitle in the forum or something.
who is going to joe rogan the bouts on twitch?
Sharpe
2985
Could Oprah write an excel spreadsheet of mech-y goodness like Legowarrior produced up thread?
I think not.
