51 replies to this topic

[FrostCollar]

Garth Erlam, on 01 May 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

I opted for a 330 over a 300, eventually, because I went from 19 DHS with three in the arms and in danger of loss, versus a 15~% boost in speed, turning, acceleration, deceleration, for the loss of 3 DHS. It's a balancing act, and in the end comes down to how you play, really.

Though you won't be escaping any fights vs. Lights with a 300XL, keep that in mind.

Granted - some of it does come down to personal preference. My concern about those faster builds though is that they're sacrificing so much additional tonnage for the larger engines and Jenner speeds that unfortunately you've only got enough left for a Jenner sized payload. Then you're directly competing with a mech that's a significantly smaller target than you are and has jump jets. The graph from that post is missing, but as I recall it confirmed that idea.

Regardless of that, I don't use the larger engines because I don't pilot a Cicada to run away from lights myself. If I wanted to run away from lights I'd take a light, preferrably the 150 KPH 3L. Instead, I build my Cicadas for the role I enjoy best: moving at near light-mech speeds with 5 tons more for armor and guns. To that end, my Cicada builds look more like this:

• Cicada 2A. Compare to Garth's suggestion - somewhat slower but a significantly higher sustained DPS due to those extra heatsinks. I do lose the arms sometimes and the heatsinks with them, but less often than you'd think - most people don't aim for them even when I'm torso twisting due to the size of the CT. This feels like a good time to encourage Garth to maybe mention to the hitbox guys that the Cicada's CT could probably stand to be a bit smaller and the side torsos a bit bigger.
  
• Cicada 3M. The EWAR Cicada that's desperately hoping for a BAP buff. I've got a five button mouse and I've got two tied to each mouse button and one in each group assigned to a side button. It effectively gives me three fire modes - 4MPL chainfire, 2 MPL bursts, and an alpha. Quite fun.
  
• PPC 3M. Not terribly successful in the past, but I'll post it for completeness. You can swap out a DHS for a TAG if you wish. I should probably try it again with ballistic HSR.
  
• Old X-5. A powerful build indeed when SRMs hit harder than they do now. This is the one where the XL300 really comes most into effect - that additional missile firepower served me well. It and me had some good times flanking mediums and ruining back armor on assaults. It was easily one of my favorite mechs. These days, it underperforms and probably shouldn't be run until the next missile patch.
  
• New X-5. When I still use the X-5 (less) I use something along these lines. Feel free to use a different engine - the XL255's left over from a Spider I owned.

I don't own a 2B because I didn't really think it would play differently enough from the 2A and X-5, and I don't own a 3C because its selection of hardpoints are more of a punchline than anything. Plus, I'm not a big fan of autocannons. If only they introduced the 3F - the Cicada with jump jets! Sadly, it's out of the timeline.

Full disclosure though - I've mastered my Cicadas already. If you're a new player reading this and you don't yet have speed tweak, I fully concede that Garth's suggestion for a larger engine looks more attractive than mine. You need some pep in your step to survive and the XL300 only really provides that with speed tweak.

[Garth Erlam]

Just for my reasoning - the 19 DHS 2A gets 3/4's of a second more weapons fire - and loses 10% speed, 10% turning, 10% acceleration. Also, two of those DHS in the 300XL 2A are in an arm with 19 total hitpoints, meaning a single AC/20, two PPC/ERPPC, 4 ML hits, etc, and you lose two DHS. Now you've lost the only real advantage to take the 300XL/19 DHS.

It IS up to personal taste, but my combat effectiveness has shot up since I changed to a 330 (or 325, if you want more arm armour.)

[HarmAssassin]

Twitter? pfft

[FrostCollar]

Well fair's fair - the XL300 makes the most difference within the X-5 rather than the 2A, and the 2A is not my favorite 'Cada. Even so, I rarely lose the arms and when I do, things have generally gone south enough that it's the least of my problems. Still, I concede that it's not the end-all 2A build. I stand by the old X-5 build though - 3 bursts of four missiles are quite a bit better than one.

Though, I've got the XL330 in the garage. Might as well give it a go again - I haven't tried it in the 2A some time.

[Butane9000]

Now if only I gave a [expletive] about twitter.

[Garth Erlam]

You picked an interesting topic to comment on not liking twitter.

And Frost, try it out. Pairs well with the Jenny F for leg hunting

[Joe Mallad]

Like the new camo skin but can we get this kind of news here officially by PGI instead of all this stuff being hinted at or shown on things like twitter?

[FrostCollar]

Garth Erlam, on 01 May 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

And Frost, try it out. Pairs well with the Jenny F for leg hunting

Indeed! The 2A and the JF are quite the scalpels when used correctly.

[shotokan5]

Twitter is the last thing I would have ever signed off on but well Garth might make it worth it.

Poor Garth must be going over the edge to get twitter, but so may I. I might install it.

[Arkus Bethla]

The reason you jam the bigger engine in is because then you can get reasonable DHS heat dissipation. With the "Only DHS inside the engine are truly doubled" rule you essentially over power a fast mech's weapon payload since any DHS you could decide to put outside the engine with your extra tonnage instead are much less useful. You may as well use that weight to make yourself a moving target and make as many DHS as possible fully useful so you can fire more. Considering your turn speed AND torso twist and perhaps even arm convergence (!!) is also tied to the engine size you rarely lose with a faster mech so long as you don't give up _everything_.

Saw a lightly armed Treb with a max engine tear up a lance of mechs with slow engines because they couldn't track him; he had no fear of being hit and the weapons he had were all firing continuous on Caustic.

[jay35]

shotokan5, on 01 May 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

Twitter is the last thing I would have ever signed off on but well Garth might make it worth it.

Poor Garth must be going over the edge to get twitter, but so may I. I might install it.

Install it? wtf? lol

[FrostCollar]

Arkus Bethla, on 01 May 2013 - 03:45 PM, said:

The reason you jam the bigger engine in is because then you can get reasonable DHS heat dissipation. With the "Only DHS inside the engine are truly doubled" rule you essentially over power a fast mech's weapon payload since any DHS you could decide to put outside the engine with your extra tonnage instead are much less useful.

Important note: only the double heat sinks included in an engine's tonnage are doubled in effectiveness versus SHS. All engines of size 250 and above include 10 heat sinks - and no more regardless of how much larger they are than 250. In addition, though larger engines do gain the ability to have heat sinks added inside them, these additional heat sinks do not count as inside the engine for heat purposes. They're just at 1.4 times effectiveness like other DHS.

Therefore, you're not actually gaining any heat efficiency from including an engine larger than 250. Certainly, you're adding more speed and manuverability and the ability to add heat sinks to them, which helps with space. You're not getting any more true double heat sinks though.

EDIT: Whoops, looks like Thontor's covered that base already.

Edited by FrostCollar, 03 May 2013 - 08:14 AM.