Sorry, I do not fully understand this. I now keep mine unlocked or "free" all the time.
Are you saying that having them locked allows a quicker way to bring all weapons to fire? I think I see what you mean but not 100% sure. I think you are saying that when locked, all weapons are in the same direction and elevation which makes it easier and faster to shoot?
Arm lock ensures that all your weapons (both arm and torso mounted) will fire at the same spot on an enemy mech. It concentrates the damage into a smaller area, which generally makes for a more effective shot.
The downside is that with arm lock engaged your range of fire is reduced to what you can hit with your torso, so the ability to engage/disengage arm lock quickly in game is very useful, hence why many players remap a key binding to toggle it on/off.
Arm lock ensures that all your weapons (both arm and torso mounted) will fire at the same spot on an enemy mech. It concentrates the damage into a smaller area, which generally makes for a more effective shot.
I didn't think 'arm lock' had anything to do with torso... might just be me being a noob.
BaconTWOfourACTUAL, on 11 July 2016 - 02:51 PM, said:
I didn't think 'arm lock' had anything to do with torso... might just be me being a noob.
Happend to most of us, no worry. But, yes, with unlocked arms, your torso pitch and yaw speed improves.
Likewise, armlock will make it slower (which can be used for a bit more control while aiming.
Note, arms are locked onto where your torso weapons are pointing, the only method for having full accuracy while moving your torso, if you do not move your torso you have full accuracy with or without armlock (expect falling and landing ofc)
Use both frequently and you will have the advantages (and disadvantges) of both methods down in no time.
Just figure out how you want to use it (tab or hold to enable/disable armlock) there isn't one single way of doing it.
The feeling when to use which comes with a little experience, shouldn't take you much time, tho.
A little tick you should consider is to play mech which are played with torso weapons only (Dakka kodiaks or mauler and also laservomit battlemasters) without armlock, The mech simply reacts faster.
I constantly see such mechs played with armlock for literally no reason at all.
Ah, and you do need actuators to use armlock, or rather to unlock it. Not all mechs have the same actuators (lower, upper, hand). Omni'mechs will lose actuators when mounting PPCs or ballistics and they can dismount their actuators at will at the mechlab, Battle'mechs do not lose their actuators even when mounted with PPCs or ballistics. SO check your Omni'mechs when you switch loadouts.
Edited by Toha Heavy Industries, 11 July 2016 - 03:35 PM.
Sorry, I do not fully understand this. I now keep mine unlocked or "free" all the time.
Are you saying that having them locked allows a quicker way to bring all weapons to fire? I think I see what you mean but not 100% sure. I think you are saying that when locked, all weapons are in the same direction and elevation which makes it easier and faster to shoot?
Yes, it's better to keep your arms locked to your torso reticle. This means that unless I deliberately unlock them to use just the arms, all of my guns are aimed in the same place - the benefit is that I have all my firepower immediately available for that focused strike. If I need to use my arms independently (such as firing arm weapons at targets far above/below me,) I have a key for that, but putting all of my firepower on the same place instantly is a far more useful default.
In other words, arm lock is a choice between slightly faster reactions with arm weapons (off) and better accuracy all the time (on.) The marginally faster response time with a few of my weapons isn't worth having to hit a key to be accurate - because most of the time I want to hit the enemy with all my guns in the same spot. In order to do that with arm lock off, I have to decide to hit my Arm Lock hotkey, then finish aiming - this significantly increases my response time. So having Arm Lock on helps me focus damage on the enemy 'mech; Arm Lock off actively interferes.
The best piece of advice ignored at first is this:
Discovery is half the fun.
Early on I went with build ideas that were considered good, competitive or meta. Sometimes they were spectacular. Sometimes they were pretty good. And sometimes they sucked balls. These three descriptions fit every single one of those "only way to play" builds which sucked the life and fun out of the game in less than 2 months of playing.
(And I want you to imagine how bad 'meta' sucked the fun out of the game, when back then the game was a lot cooler than it is now. You could build battering rams and slam mechs into mechs to tackle enemies and do flying dropkicks in Ravens. Brawling was far more common than 'camp and snipe' and sometimes you'd have 16 mechs in the middle of the map doing circles and blasting the living crap out of each other. Other times you'd have bowling. Oh and don't forget 8 lights versus 8 lights, or 7 assaults and a light versus 2 assaults, 2 heavies and 4 mediums.)
This video isn't indicative of fun, but needless to say what I said I hated during the video is something I loved. Just gotta keep in mind that the agility a 50 ton medium mech had back then... is less than a 100 ton assault with full elite skill tree unlocked and an engine to give it 64.8 kph (before speedtweak) has in MWO now. Slowing down and turning? Not terribly easy. So when a ram was about to happen it was like trying to steer a mack truck away from it while in mid-skid! Heh, back then Jenners felt like huge 18 wheelers and so a high speed battle with ramming and shooting was really intense.
Also you had time to screw around like this; something you can't risk doing anymore.
So when the dread set in, it didn't take me long to realize that not only was it more fun to come up with my own builds, but at times these were effective in far more situations than the Preening Meta Queens with their single purpose near-instant kill machines of death.
In fact in very short order I was producing things like a bull-rushing assault mech with just two large pulse lasers that could waddle in, brawl into point blank range where most enemies were helpless and deliver insane damage, destruction and kills... designed in such a way that my average repair bill would have been less than 75K when the average assault mech repair bill would be in excess of 100,000 to 375,000, and my earnings in that old economy before repairs would have been in the high 850,000 (c-bills) for above average success and victory.
God it was ingenious and nobody even thought of it due to its unheard-of simplicity.
Before long I had great fun in absolutely insane things.
I'd throw weapons that players would say were worthless onto my mechs...
And I'd do fantastic.
("That's a low" meaning that this was a very low amount of damage/kills for me with this build). Butchering with kill after kill even though I'm doing miniscule amounts of damage with a weapon that at the time did a total of 4 damage in 10 seconds (MGs), a weapon with scattered damage (LBX), and useless flamers (which did 0.7 damage in 10 seconds).
(Vid from a year later when damage was buffed)
So I began building Mechs that could tank incredible amounts of damage by straying from the norms (35 ton light? STD engine?!?!)
Mechs that would just be able to keep hitting and hitting and hitting without rest.
And that even when defeated, refused to kneel or lay down. (I'm the mech behind the screen.)
So then I'd step it up, and put these supposedly worthless weapons on mechs that were also considered worthless.
And I'd use them to take on mechs twice their weight.
And I'd win.
I'd take it a step further and turn heads.
Meta-purists think I'm crazy. There's memes with Buzz Lightyear saying "Heresy, heresy everywhere" and a few other weird ones. And hey, it makes me pretty infamous.
And what have those fun builds taught me? New tricks.
The Flamer Trollbuchet became the "Eternally Cold Treb." Never overheats, even before quirks. Quirks just made it even easier after the fact.
My Anti-Meta Heavy Metal (Highlander Hero) brawler...
Became Deadlier than the meta.
On a build that I still use to this day, and have since 2013.
(On that video, skip to 6:40).
At the end of the day, I can sit and rest against the pillar knowing I've turned the meta world upside down for each foe I come across.
And maybe, I'll flip your world too.
For what little my opinion is worth, I do like your style.
About arm lock, from my point of view. (Others opinions may differ, and thats fine)
When I am under fire from the opponent, I like to toggle arm lock off so that my hands can be used as shields. I rotate left or right while looking up- in hopes that my arms will catch incoming fire ment to hit my side torsos.
I personally prefer fully torso mounted weapons, so I can check arm lock off full time instead of having to toggle on and off mid battle, but some builds require arm mounted weapons so... I make sure to have toggle mapped (to my shift- personal preferance)
In response to Alex and the ancient art of blocking with fists.
One of the greatest things about the old days was firing times were slow enough and most weapons went on the same cycle of 4 seconds. So you could exchange blows, and twist just before he fires (look at Trollbuchet video's other version (gotta look for Trollbuchet on YouTube ) and notice the "Warning, Targeted!". This chimed every time an enemy aimed at you. Thus soon as you heard this or on good timing, twist or throw an arm in the way.
Once had a battle one on one more or less a formidable opponent who knew this ancient art.
Myself in a Muromets (Cataphract Hero) and an enemy Atlas D had a hefty dual at sub 200 meters that lasted nearly 3 minutes because we both were doing this. Each with an AC/20 and lasers. Him backed up with missiles. Me backed up with twin MGs. I swear it would have been my best video if I was recording. It was during the early days of Conquest and we are on Frozen City, almost everyone is duking it out at Theta by the "Titanic" except me and him. His arm armor's in the dark red. I've lost an arm as a huge bullet rips it off when I used it to deflect. My other arm isn't doing too good and my tactic of cramming in close to disrupt his convergence (delayed convergence was still a thing) had only delayed what seemed inevitable. He was too good. Even the shifts in verticality we were both using were just further delaying the fact that this guy was going to win. His AC/20 was disabled. His missiles however were always the real threat and shifting range to trick his missiles to warp around me was getting harder. Ive lost my cannon. I'm now literally down to a left torso and a right arm (yay bug!). One medium laser and an MG. He's out of ammo, but two out of four medium lasers are still functional. By this point he has one arm and enough damage to his CT from the few times I managed to bypass his defense that one of his CT lasers is down. So this is it. Two lasers versus a laser and a machine gun.
But just before I lost the left side, a realization came to me as he went high on the hill during our opposing circles of death... My lasers grazed his leg. It jumped from yellow to dark orange for hardly nothing. I had a chance! Shifting all attention to his left leg another laser and some pathetic MG damage later it breaks. Limp you formidable thorn in my side, limp! Sweeping behind him, he tried to use his remaining arm to shoot me but he couldn't reach. As I drilled into his remaining leg he extended his arm downward to try and block me, but I'm gnawing his ankle and he couldn't reach. He went down, and some seconds later despite my team's efforts and physical triumph, we lost in points with something like 39 left to get.
If repair and rearm was still a thing, we'd both drown in debt.
-----
Far as arm lock I leave it off and use shift to toggle it to focus firepower or anti-light / long range precision.
I keep my arms free due to faster twist speed, using arms to block fire though not nearly as effective in MWO as it used to be. I also use my arms to end off lights while engaging bigger enemies or for more advanced lock acquisition and advanced missile tricks such as corner shooting and forcing missiles to turn sharply after passing the enemy (the missile U-turn against enemies behind cover).
Arm lock ensures that all your weapons (both arm and torso mounted) will fire at the same spot on an enemy mech. It concentrates the damage into a smaller area, which generally makes for a more effective shot. The downside is that with arm lock engaged your range of fire is reduced to what you can hit with your torso, so the ability to engage/disengage arm lock quickly in game is very useful, hence why many players remap a key binding to toggle it on/off.
This and what was added by VA was what I thought. I was told within days to turn my arms free and I have it set that way, I'd have to check if I made a toggle. That was been the only way I played after the first 3-4 days. (I started Apiril 26th I think)
One reason I did it was because it is harder to shoot with the arms unlocked and I thought it would help me learn to aim and shoot better.
But I'm seeing your reasoning and "math" on this issue. In fact, I have Hellbringers with everything in their torsos and I hit well with them. But some of the mechs with everything in their arms are harder it seems to get hits. I need to go ahead and set up streaming so I can see my own games. I'm wondering if this is one of the reasons behind my accuracies issues.
I'm wondering if this is one of the reasons behind my accuracies issues.
THANKS
Just wondering, but whats your in-game mouse sensitivity set at? (If you dont remember the number, is it far left, far right, in the middle somewhere?)
Dunno if someone's said this one yet, but my biggest one - build your mechs asymmetrically. As soon as I started doing that, it opened up a world of piloting tactics - things like shield siding and corner poking to name the biggest
Audacious Aubergine, on 16 July 2016 - 12:32 AM, said:
Dunno if someone's said this one yet, but my biggest one - build your mechs asymmetrically. As soon as I started doing that, it opened up a world of piloting tactics - things like shield siding and corner poking to name the biggest
not nesiceraly good for all chassis but that is great for some Mechs, e.g. most Hunchbacks, some Griffins and Wolverines have most of their guns on 1 side so use a standard engine and shield with the unarmed or lightly armed side, that will make the Mech exceptionally durable, on the other hand there are plenty of chassis which are best built symmetrical.
There are a few pointers that I would like to share in 100% solo quick play games that I'd taken for granted initially.
1) Make sure your game works at 60fps.
2) Aim and shoot properly and quickly.
3) Learn how to torso twist and do so at all times if possible.
4) Identify the best locations to perform various actions for all maps. (Visit testing grounds)
5) Always stick with the crowd and don't be left behind. (See the mini maps every couple of seconds)
6) Watching the twitch videos of top pilots using the mech of your choice.
7) Observe the activities of better pilots in-game after your mech is destroyed.
8) Camouflage your mech with colors that made it blend into the environment.
9) Customize the meta loadouts to your own play style.
10) Configure the sensitivity of the mouse that controls the target reticle.
How would you up the FPS of an existing PC? A better video card? My FPS is only 37. One bit of advice not taken till lately, get the Seismic Module.
Basically. Upping RAM might help too, but video card has the biggest impact by far. I run 1440x900 at 100+ FPS just fine regardless of the map with the setting shown below with a old 2GB Radeon HD 7800 that I picked up for $80 used. MWO can really get by with older gen cards pretty well if you are looking to pick up a cheap upgrade that will still make a big difference.
LocationSomewhere in Midwest, I think??? Dang "Drinkin Man's" Shooter bad for my memory! ^_^
Posted 18 July 2016 - 04:15 PM
Best piece of advice I ignored at first???? IDK...that was a long time ago!
How bout best piece of advice I still to this day haven't learned to accept, that still makes me wanna punch my self in the face after some matches???
That would be easy.......It'd be "Never underestimate your opponent, always assume he/she's better then you."
Three plus years and 15k plus matches........This is still one the biggest, if not The Biggest, thing that gets my drunk driving/piloting butt shot off! (Aside from obvious stuff like roflstomps, team lost match, etc, etc) I'll find my groove and start picking things apart like I'm piloting a multi-ton killing machine.
One encounter will play out how I expected/better then I expected and I'll wonder to myself if the other guy was just stupid/blind/noob or am I just that good tonight.....meh.....whatever? Roll onto my next enemy encounter and it'll play out basically the same...........and so on and so on however many more times I get "lucky" that match . Then I'll run across one of the remaining enemy/the last remaining enemy, go in to keep my roll rollin........and quickly learn the hard way there's a reason this fella is one the remaining/last remaining and it wasn't cause he was hiding at the back/dumb luck.
S#$% F#$% where the hell'd my ST go? Oh hell, that little ****** armed and knows how to use it!!!!!!!
It's cause that fella had his S#$% together/I wasn't the only one that match getting "good" and/or lucky/or whatever the hell happened to be the case that match.....and I've now served as an overly eager/over-inflated ego/just plain stupid warning to any survivors on my team.........the enemy is still armed!
2
LikeUntoGod, on 11 July 2016 - 01:50 PM, said:
