86 replies to this topic

[JohnoBurr]

Lord Perversor, on 24 January 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:

Also alway remember the Dragon it's 5Kp/h Slower than Tabletop, so if PGI sets the number right we should be faster...

Anyway i fell in love with my 1C

lbx-10, Srm 6, 4x Med lasers
300 xl, endo and DHS (still enough place for ams and Bap)

Yep, that's a great build. I run the same thing except with a regular AC10.

[ENS Puskin]

I knew one player who loved the Dragon with triple AC/2 and he was a big badass with this loadout. Unfortunatelly he lost interest for this game.

[Mokey Mot]

Dragons were highly effective when collisions were still in, after all, that's what they were designed for. They are more of a 'dirty' pilots 'mech. When we still had collisions, you would see packs of dragons doing nothing but knocking 'mechs over so they were easy kills. No doubt they were the catalyst for collisions being removed outright, instead of being fixed.

[Lege]

Dragon has no punch and a big nose.
I tried to miss your nose by shooting at the mountain, but I hit the Dragons nose anyway.
So easy to core, it isn't funny.
Most people don't even bother to change the armor, so the rear armor is usually really thin too.
60 ton has always been one I didn't like. Nothing was really that good or worked very well.
35, 55 and 75 have so much more potential.
under 35 is not a good idea, just too easy to die.
35-40 you can make some fast mechs with decent fire power.
45-50 not bad, can make some very nice mechs at this tonnage
55 is just better and the heaviest mech for .5 ton jump jets
60-65 never worked for me
70 does ok, but 75 is a sweet spot
80 is ok
85 is nice, heaviest mech for 1 ton jump jets
90 is good
95-100, just too big and slow

I'd really like to see a fast 55 ton mech with 6 hard points in a energy/missile mix and one variant with ecm.
Something with a base engine of a 275, so the max engine would be 355.

[ElLocoMarko]

Yes. It is a medium... with a HUGE center torso.

6 hardpoints in weird layouts that often prevent multiples of larger guns that are the standard in the other heavies (dual UAC5 - NO! Dual SRM6 - NO!)
Jenners have 6 hardpoints. Hunchbacks have 6 to 9. Dragon has 6. So it had better mount bigger guns in the hard points that it has.

The wicked upturn in tonnage of energy weapons pretty much means you are going to mount medium lasers and like it. If there was a 2-3 ton, 2 crit double-barrel medium laser... then we would have something to work with.

Also keep in mind with class matching and the dragon being mis-labelled as Heavy, dropping as a Dragon could very well bring a cataphract or catapult onto the opposing team... if you are lucky it will be another dragon. I'm not saying that a Dragon can't defeat one of its larger heavy brethren. I've done it plenty of times. But it takes the right terrain and maneuvering and way too much time.

Edited by ElLocoMarko, 24 January 2013 - 02:20 PM.

[Steinar Bergstol]

The Dragon does indeed have a huge Center Torso. Chances are if you pilot one having your CT cored is what's going to kill you. That said, this liability can be turned into an advantage of sorts as the fact that your side torsos are likely to be hit less than your CT means the Dragon is a good candidate for an XL engine without risking dying to side toso loss as badly as many other mechs would.

Personally I'd like to see the Grand Dragon released, but at least you can turn a Flame into something close to a GD.

[ArcDemon]

The Dragon, Cicada and Awesome are all essentially hybrid mechs, being a heavier armored version of their respective previous tier. How well a hybrid design works depends on the loadout and the player. If you try playing a Dragon exclusively like a heavy it will lose, but it play it like a juiced up medium it is very powerful. Same goes with the Cicada, it is essentially a light mech but with a little more armor, a few more hard points and an extra 5 tons to let it mount bigger weapons then a light would normally carry. The Awesome is probably the weakest of the hybrids - except for the 9M it doesn't have the speed to really run with heavies and it has that barn sized chest for enemies to shoot at.