Mechwarrior Online coming 2012 and it's free

[El Guapo]

Not sure how I feel about the double-Gauss hero mech.

Oh man, I remember back in MechWarrior 2 when I started running an Atlas with two gauss rifles, two PPCs, two SRM6s, and two medium lasers. That thing was awesome.

[Daehawk]

But you just said it was an Atlas

[NickAragua]

Well, let's be honest, the standard model's AC-20 is only good in tabletop. In MW2, the damn thing would run out of ammo if you even so much as hovered your finger over the trigger.

[El Guapo]

But you just said it was an Atlas

Um, yes I did. Good reading comprehension!

[Daehawk]

But you just said it was an Atlas

Um, yes I did. Good reading comprehension!

Atlas...Awesome....nm

[GreenGoo]

But you just said it was an Atlas

Um, yes I did. Good reading comprehension!

Atlas...Awesome....nm

I got it.

El Guapo, there is a mech called Awesome.

This is the Awesome that I remember.

[El Guapo]

But you just said it was an Atlas

Um, yes I did. Good reading comprehension!

Atlas...Awesome....nm

I got it.

El Guapo, there is a mech called Awesome.

This is the Awesome that I remember.

Yeah, I know about the Awesome, I just didn't realize that's what his first comment was referring to.

[NickAragua]

I was just going to say that I'd rather have an Awesome with 3x PPC than a stock Atlas with AC20 and a bunch of miscellaneous crap. AC20 is pretty good in table top (can you say one shot kill with a head shot?), but in MW2 the damn thing would run out of ammo before I even pulled the trigger. Sure, with my mech design approach, I'm basically spending the entire mission listening to "shutdown initiated" "shutdown overridden" and that interminable beeping. But at least I've got unlimited ammo.

[Zarathud]

Awesome is also a classic Steiner mech...besides being an amazing laser boat.

[GreenGoo]

3 PPCs is a huge amount of heat and even the 80 ton Awesome couldn't handle a constant fire rate with them.

[Daehawk]

In MWO I have a Thunderbolt with 2 ER PPCs . It makes a mess of enemies at range. Also the ammo wont explode hehe.

[El Guapo]

3 PPCs is a huge amount of heat and even the 80 ton Awesome couldn't handle a constant fire rate with them.

This is true, which is why 2 PPCs and 2 Gauss Rifles was so much better. The Gauss Rifles deal (IIRC) about as much as the PPCs but take virtually no heat, so it's like 4 PPCs without the heat issues. You had to deal with limited ammo, sure, but bringing a little extra ammo makes that not much of an issue (as long as you're not a shitty aim), and you have the 2 PPCs and lasers in a pinch.

[Daehawk]

Gauss is the only type mech I dont have. I think I have the spare creds to buy a new mech. I should look into a Gauss build. No idea what that would be yet. Lots of research ahead.

[NickAragua]

3 PPCs is a huge amount of heat and even the 80 ton Awesome couldn't handle a constant fire rate with them.

This is true, which is why 2 PPCs and 2 Gauss Rifles was so much better. The Gauss Rifles deal (IIRC) about as much as the PPCs but take virtually no heat, so it's like 4 PPCs without the heat issues. You had to deal with limited ammo, sure, but bringing a little extra ammo makes that not much of an issue (as long as you're not a shitty aim), and you have the 2 PPCs and lasers in a pinch.

In tabletop, I believe the way it's commonly handled is 3-2-3-2-3, so you fire 3 the first round, then "just" 2 the next round to cool off, then 3 again. The stock Awesome has an obscene amount of heat sinks but not enough to just hose away non-stop. In MW2, heat dissipation is pretty weird - it doesn't kick in right away *and* it doesn't happen nearly as fast as the number of heat sinks to generated heat ratio would indicate (you'd expect to be able to tape down the trigger at 1:1 ratio of heat to heat sinks, but that's not the case). Also, PPCs are pretty random in MW2 - they have this weird variable area of effect and I'm pretty sure they don't do fixed damage, either. I've uh, accidentally blown up objects I was supposed to protect firing at enemy mechs standing too close to them (uh, sorry about that air dome, fellas).

The PPC/Gauss mixture is a good idea in theory (and I might just try it if I play through MW2 again), but I'm definitely leaving all the small stuff at home and putting it into extra armor, ammo and heat sinks. And maybe a little more speed. The Atlas is slooooooow. And, of course, stuff every gun and heat sink into the torso sections.

[GreenGoo]

3 PPCs is a huge amount of heat and even the 80 ton Awesome couldn't handle a constant fire rate with them.

This is true, which is why 2 PPCs and 2 Gauss Rifles was so much better. The Gauss Rifles deal (IIRC) about as much as the PPCs but take virtually no heat, so it's like 4 PPCs without the heat issues. You had to deal with limited ammo, sure, but bringing a little extra ammo makes that not much of an issue (as long as you're not a shitty aim), and you have the 2 PPCs and lasers in a pinch.

edit: the longer I think about it, I think El Guapo is talking about AC 10's, which did the same damage for less heat, finite (and heavy) ammo, and explosions. I don't think any mech pre-clan could actually fit 2 gauss cannons on it.

Around the time of the Awesome's heyday, Gauss Rifles did about 15 damage for almost no heat (1?) but weighed as much as a light mech, each. If I recall correctly.

Personally I would take a trebuchet (medium?) or catapult (heavy?) downgrade their LRMs (not below LRM 10's though), pop 2 standard large lasers (8 dam, 8 heat) and pound the ever living crap out of everything, starting at long range and finishing at any range.

standard LL's were 8 dam/8 heat vesus a PPC's 10 dam/10 heat. With 2 LL's (one on each arm) you get 16 damage versus 20 damage (NOT a huge difference based on game mechanics) as well as 16 heat versus 20 heat (HUGE difference based on game mechanics).

I regularly killed any PPC armed mech with an identical mech with the PPC's replaced with LL's and any extras that made sense. Extra heat sinks for constant fire rate, or an ML (or 3?) for extra firepower, or armour, or whatever.

Gauss guns were powerful, but less useful in generic mech battles. Even the AC 20 was slightly more useful (but still not great) for various reasons which escape me right now.

P.S. All my comments are tabletop related, not MWO.

[El Guapo]

I'm only talking about MechWarrior 2 here. I've played some Table Top, but not a ton, and I don't recall using Gauss Cannons much in table top (most of the times I played it has been with stock mech designs).

[GreenGoo]

Okey dokey. That makes the rest of my input moot.

[NickAragua]

Heh, yeah, I've been talking about both. They really are two different beasts. The main difference being that, in tabletop, you have really fine-grain control over your heat level and positioning, while in the mechwarrior series, you're basically holding on to the mouse with white knuckles trying to juggle shooting bad guys, not falling off a cliff and not shutting down from taping down the trigger on 3 PPCs (In MW2, firing 4 PPCs at once is pretty much an automatic shut down no matter how many heat sinks you have).

edit: And range matters a lot more in tabletop. In Mechwarrior, it's pretty much you're either in range or not.

Which is why I'm really looking forward to the HBS Battletech game.

[IceBear]

The ppc had a slightly longer range than a ll but it's almost impossible to keep the battle at that distance. When I was playing tabletop we never customized the load outs from stock...the fluff made it sound like they could barely keep things working so taking out a Maurader's PPCs and replacing them with large lasers just seemed unpossible (as much as I wanted to as GreenGoo points out)

[GreenGoo]

The ppc had a slightly longer range than a ll but it's almost impossible to keep the battle at that distance. When I was playing tabletop we never customized the load outs from stock...the fluff made it sound like they could barely keep things working so taking out a Maurader's PPCs and replacing them with large lasers just seemed unpossible (as much as I wanted to as GreenGoo points out)

Yes, good point about range. And as you also point out, the range advantage exists for exactly 1 turn in a many turn battle, if that.

Of note is that a base mech comes with 10 heat sinks (1 sink reduces heat by 1 point per turn). Every sink after that weighs 1 ton. The Awesome, if I remember correctly had exactly 30 heat sinks, which allowed it to fire all 3 PPCs every turn if it did nothing else, including move. And that's with TWENTY tons of heatsinks on an 80 ton mech. Fully 1/4 of the mech was heat sinks, which still wasn't enough if you ever wanted to move and fire on the same turn.

If a PPC mech couldn't kill it's opponent in the first round or 2 of firing, it had to take a turn or 2 off with no or reduced weapons fire. Meanwhile an LL equipped mech could fire every turn if designed right. Assuming both mechs live through the first 2 rounds of combat/weapons fire, the LL has 1 or 2 extra turns of full firepower before the PPC mech cools down enough to fire them again. Making matters worse, the PPC mech rarely gets down to zero heat (barring a break in combat) so it's just a constant cascade of heat until it turns off from heat or dies from the higher fire rate of lower damage weapons (like the LL).

I never played a table top game with just the default mechs. When I was introduced to the game I was also introduced to designing mechs (it didn't help that everyone was in engineering school) so min/maxing was the name of the game. We weren't playing Steiner versus Davion, we were playing Bob versus Joe. I very much enjoyed reading the fluff though.

[NickAragua]

Right, that's why you do 3-2-3. You're right though, an Awesome doesn't really work that well by itself - a laser boat can get into minimum range pretty quickly and then it's all over. And let's face it, the small laser is a joke. Might as well leave the tonnage empty. However, paired with something that packs a nasty bite up close (let's say a stock Hunchback, which, I believe has an AC-20), you'll think twice before getting into point blank range. So it's a real team player type of mech.

Speaking of tabletop, anybody ever get any use out of rear-facing weapons (other than by removing them and remounting them forward or using the tonnage for something else)? They seem like a giant waste of tonnage to me, since if someone's in my rear arc, then a little pea shooter back there isn't going to prevent my mech from receiving a giant robot enema.

[GreenGoo]

Yeah, if you REALLY were all about min/maxing, you'd build a large (but not huge!) mech with high mobility, high armour, decent heat dissipation and about a million-zillion ML's.

So while I say it was all about min/maxing, it's pretty boring to throw 2 identical mechs armed with nothing but medium lasers at each other over and over again.

Typically we'd agree on a total team weight and then go from there.

[IceBear]

For awhile in university I was running my D&D group through a Mechwarrior mercenary campaign. My friend had the hots for the Atlas so he saved until he could afford one. The first time he fielded it I took it out (and killed his Mechwarrior character) with a Wasp and Stinger in the first round of firing. It was awesome

[Daehawk]

I'm only talking about MechWarrior 2 here. I've played some Table Top, but not a ton, and I don't recall using Gauss Cannons much in table top (most of the times I played it has been with stock mech designs).

MW2 was my first true graphical mech game. Id played one on the SNES and such but nothing like the looks of MW2. I remember the PPCs in that game fired slow blue orbs of death. I expected them to look the same from there on out but the next game really threw me for a loop when the PPCs were nothing like that. Took some getting used to.

As for Gauss it was my favorite thing in MW4. I always ran an Uziel with dual PPCs as long as I could then kept it in my team as an NPC player while I took something bigger.

[Zarathud]

We stopped playing MechWarrior Tabletop when one player created a light melee mech squad that could always get behind the big mechs for an insane melee attack and was ridiculously hard to hit at range. Most of the time he could hit and run until it was time for the killing blow.

[Daehawk]

Heres a quad gauss TimberWolf build

[IceBear]

We stopped playing MechWarrior Tabletop when one player created a light melee mech squad that could always get behind the big mechs for an insane melee attack and was ridiculously hard to hit at range. Most of the time he could hit and run until it was time for the killing blow.

Yeah...that was another reason I stuck with the stock TR3025 mechs. I figured those were playtested to minimize cheese

[GreenGoo]

I don't recall melee being a part of battletech at that stage of the game. Death from Above was about as physical as it got. Possibly charge attacks?

It's possible I don't recall because I never explored that aspect of the game. That said, I would expect a game with melee to have multiple mechs with giant swords and fists and chainsaws, and I don't remember any of that either.

[IceBear]

As far as I know, punching, kicking, charging, pushing, death from above and melee weapons have always been in the game. The hatchetman was a favored mech of one of my friends

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hatchetman

The hit location tables had one for punches and one for kicking. The punching table was also used if the mech was standing behind cover that was waist high

[GreenGoo]

I recall the hatchetman but don't recall anything specific in the mech's description with regard to the hatchet. Like, I don't recall it being a separate installed weapon, what damage it did, how much it weighed. Nothing.

Oh well, that's on me then I guess. For whatever reason I don't recall it at all and probably never used melee in my designs/tactics.

Very weird.

Honestly I remember the "weird" mechs like the hatchetman as being nothing but colour text to make them more interesting sounding.

Hilarious that I can remember how many heatsinks the Awesome had (and it had something like 1 small laser supporting the 3 PPCs, is what I remember) but can't remember melee being in the game at all.

[IceBear]

Well we knew about them but they didn't get used a lot as you basically had to be base to base with another mech and were risky (some of them did damage to you too and missing might mean falling over). There were restrictions too...like needing hand actuators to punch so some mechs (like a warhammer) couldn't punch

[GreenGoo]

It's possible that melee never entered my mind at the time (although I would think the books would have covered it). It was my first exposure to turn based table top combat games so it was all new to me.

Amusingly, melee is the first thing I want to try in shooter video games if it's allowed.

Anyway, I've derailed enough. Back to your mechwarrior online chatter.

I think I mentioned that I jumped in on the original founder package, played the beta a ton, but never used any of the things (mechs, money, whatever) that came with the package before moving onto other games. Waste of money but I can't feel bad about it. Was fun while it lasted.

[Daehawk]

Im trying to rebuild my Atlas AS7-S I got as a reward years ago. I dont use it because it came with LRMs and crap on it. Its the little bit of all master of none type.

Im considering making it with a 350 std engine, 3 large lasers, 1 ac20, and 4 SRM 6....how does that sound? Should I go with medium lasers or medium pulse lasers instead? I dont know why Id do that ....do large lasers lose power up close? Someone even mentioned a gauss rifle but want to build a platform just for that build.

Also wondering if I should make those missiles into artemis

[killbot737]

The ultimate cheese mech was anything that had the max # of machine guns for its weight (and only MGs), and you make it as fast as possible. You'd run up to any mech and explode on them. Alpha strike this!

I figure that's why they started doing the dedicated weapon type slots in the MechWarrior games.

[Daehawk]

Lol. I have a mech with 4 mgs and 2 LBX. And one with 3 ac5 and 1 ac2.

[Paingod]

I loved the basic Atlas D I got as a Founder, and played it quite a bit. It was completely specc'd for short range death, though, and had to find somewhere to wait or trail behind a group and hope I caught up to the fight in time to get a few good licks in. IIRC, that was a Medium Laser/AC20/SRM build through and through with a 350STD engine.

According to my stats, though, my "Best" Atlas is the S (which I got as a Legendary model). I think that was 2x Large Lasers (arms), 2x Medium Lasers (CT), 4x SRM (LT), and UAC5 (RT). Smurfy's says that's a 67 point alpha strike, and even at range the LL's gave me some bite. I opted for those over the ERLL's because they fire in 1.00 seconds vs. 1.25 seconds - meaning holding my target in the reticle less and exposing myself less.

My overall best mech for K/D is the Raven - 3L or 2X. I have a higher Kill/Death ratio with the 2X, but enjoyed the 3L more. The 2X gets outfitted just like the 3L - but doesn't have to accomodate the ECM and gets more firepower. People seem to disregard it when I mixed into groups of mediums and heavies - what threat is a Raven without ECM, right? - but it lends a good punch, and I tended to outfit mine with 2x ERLL's for added range - they can be used safely from distance with only a tiny part of your profile showing. Heat is less of an issue as you DO NOT stay exposed and you cool down between shots while you reposition - after each shot, unless you can guarantee your own safety. They just don't have the armor to trade hits with Heavies that will wait for you to peek-a-boo in the same spot over and over.

My favorite, though, was and is the Catapult Jester. I've played more rounds in that thing than anything else, and have done more than double the damage of any of my other mechs. It's got 102 kills to 86 deaths on my roster. I think I had that one outfitted with a 350XL engine, full armor (except legs) 2x LL's and 4x ML's aside from that. Don't forget the jump jets! It was a heavy that moved like a fast Medium and could easily follow the flow of battle wherever it went.

[Daehawk]

Quick question. I opened 3 crates and got 3 clan weapons. A er ppc, a large pulse laser, and a lbx 10. I can see them in my INV but when I got to the mechlab to install them they are not listed as anything I own so i cant equip them.

Any idea why this is or how I get to use them?

[Paingod]

The last time I played, I believe Clan weapons could only be equipped on Clan Mechs. If you don't have any of those in your Mechbay, you can't use them. You can't even modify a Trial Clan mech to use them...

... so at best you've got two choices - hold onto them until you get a Clan Mech, or go to the Weapons page and sell them off for C-Bills. I'd hold onto them. I've held onto every weapon and item I've ever gotten, and have quite the collection at my fingertips for building with.

[Daehawk]

Aw crap. I remember MW4 I think it was or Mercs using clan wep on anything...I think. been a while. Bummer. Thank you.

[Paingod]

Yeah. In MW4 you got all giddy and excited when you salvaged Clan tech - because it was generally a step above the IS equivelant and it made any Mech better. In MWO, when you get Clan tech, it's mostly "Yawn..." because it only fits into Clan Mechs and they've been balanced in other ways - like by having few customization options, so you're almost always stock but with a different gun. They're still good, but not jump-for-joy good.