It seems those APCs can take huge beating though, compared to the tanks I have been fighting.
My Shadow Hawk was out for quite a bit, too. The trouble I’m having with the Quickdraw is that it’s a magnet for fire and can’t quite take the hits. It’s only been ready for half the battles since I got it.
I take that as an endorsement, though. Having to choose between a half-baked force of patched-up mediums, or waiting two weeks to embark on a mission because your heavy mech is still being put back together, is quintessential BattleTech mercenary stuff.
Turn on the option to show UI during combat (can’t remember what it’s called, but it should be obvious) and this shows where the weapons hit on the mechs a bit more clearly.
As for Shadow Hawks, I have two in my lance currently. They are a great team!
Can’t find who said it, but the tip from above about adding some armor to your mechs really helped me out. I generally take a medium laser off and even jump jets on some designs and just up armor the mech. It helps survivability tremendously. My hunchback is a beast.
vyshka
1769
The sleipnir APCs certainly can move though. I was sprinting and I couldn’t get ahead of the bastards. Was a miracle they all made it to extraction.
[Shadow Hawk High Five]
I’m also rocking two right now, especially for base attack missions where I can use the frontal plate of the Quickdraw and Vindicator to attract enemy mechs and then fly the Hawks over otherwise impassable terrain to get behind the enemy and smash down the target buildings.
This is my close-quarters/flanker/scout Shadowhawk I’ve been testing:
1120 armor (almost max)
SRM 4, SRM 2, SRM 2. 2 SRM ammo.
MG, M Laser.
Currently 3 heatsinks (may tweak, it’s a bit too much)
3 jumpjets
Arm mod for +10 melee dmg
It carries more armor than some of my heavies. Tanky, fast. In theory may run into trouble if I run out of SRM ammo, but that’s what the 85 melee damage is for.
Pare the SH with the Wolvie. That makes a great one-two combination. Wolvie gets in and out faster with the longer jump jets and packs more punch mid-range while the Hawk peppers away at long range and then moves to melee for the kill.
My Jaegermech is a beast and I am sorry soon will become too fragile in the current environment and with everybody focus firing the weaker link (it has over 1000 armor, but it has become the weaker in my lance).
But the 310 damage output will be hard to give up, spceially since it’s all accurate at medium/short range. It frecuently has more usable firepower than my assaults.
I had a Wolverine in the team for a while and a Griffin. I tend to switch back and forth with those four, (Shadow/Shadow/Wolf/Griffin), but I have an irrational affection for the SHD due to events in the boardgame, so they get more love in my lance than they probably should.
Spect
1775
I have my SH paired with a Trebuchet. How come no one mentions them? I love the damage output.
I’ve only seen one Treebucket and it got squished with no salvage offered.
I am currently running an Oriion, T-Bolt, Wolverine and Trebuchet. Occasionally I put together two Trebs in a lance. I have a lot of love for those but my Treb is going into mothballs as soon as I can find the parts to put together a Catapult.
Against the AI this works wonderfully. Against a human opponent this would be folly. Every time I see a Treb I focus fire on it, close to minimum distance and beat the hell out of it before it can launch a second volley of missiles.
My Trebuchet is my favorite mech. Found a ++ LRM 15 that has helped also. Put it together with a a high gunnery and tactics pilot and it melts off armor of anything that isn’t guarded. Praying I find an Archers later, but not sure if they are in the game or not.
Precision shots with it are a delight, even with indirect fire.
Had a brutal story mission last night. I’m assuming I was a little under-powered when I started it, but I fought with a Treb, Centurion, Blackjack and Shadow Hawk. That is my standard lance right now (I’ve tried adding a Griffon and Dragon, and hated both - even though the Griffon is one of the coolest looking mechs). Basically they paired me off to take a base against 8 enemy mechs. I fought a Locust, Panther, Firestarter, Cicadia, Dragon, Griffon, Jenner, and Shadow Hawk. Overall, a group I should be able to handle I think… except the mission has a TON of turrets around their base… and not just any turrets, LRM turrets. My first run through I attack the base and take out three of the turrets, but only one of the light mechs and my lance is already missing limbs.
Try again two more times without much more success.
So, I give up trying to attack the base directly, and instead kite the hell out of the defenders, pulling light mechs into range.and knocking them down. Even with that strategy I barely survived because those damn LRM turrets have seemingly infinite range. I ended up near the edge of the map and was still getting hit with salvo’s of missiles whenever an enemy mech had a sight line on me.
So far, I haven’t minded the cinematic bits at all. However, there are two things that do bug me. 1) There is a slight pause sometimes between actions. That delay drives me nuts and 2) Watching convoy vehicles each take their turn.
I’m envious of all these mechs I’ve yet to salvage enough to get to use, heck still don’t have a heavy. Oh well, something to look forward to and it does keep me motivated to keep running some side missions till I can get my hands on something like the Orion, Trebuchet, Griffen, etc.
You’d be hard pressed to close minimum distance with a 'bucket, imo, vs a real player. But there’s only one way to be sure! Remember you can literally hide behind rocks and hills with indirect fire, the game mechanics don’t care, so to take it out you’d have to either shoot LRMs back or literally close to melee range.
vyshka
1783
This game does such a great job of making it feel like missions are balancing on the knife’s edge between success and failure. Even when you end up coming out of them fairly intact there probably were moments where the pucker factor is up. I did the Panzyr mission last night and loved that. I’ve switched my lance around a bit. After my Jagermech got its arms ripped off again and I didn’t have the autocannons on hand to refit it, I switched it over to 2 ppc and fully armored, instead of the paper thin armor it had when sporting 2 ac/2, 2 ac/5, and 2 med laser. I swapped the vin out for the time being with a centurion c9-al that can take a lot of punishment, added a trebuchet with 2 lrm15 (one is ++) and 3 medium lasers, and rounded out with my shadow hawk. I also have a hunchback I’ve been trying out. I need to work on the tactics with it more. It seems slow, so I guess I should try sprinting it up as quickly as possible and then unleash the ac/20. I probably need to add more ammo as well since it has so few shots.
I think removing weapons and upping armor is super smart in this game.
