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All credits go to Dr. Crankwerk for sharing this guide with us :
Introduction
In the first article Dr.Crankwerk's guide to the Mechlab, I talked about creating a philosophy creating your Mech build, in essence a methodology to create a Battle Mech that fits your play-style, this article will take it further by going on to the aspect of build optimization and the next natural step. To make it clearer what optimization we will talk about Min-Maxing, from now on. As it is the natural approach for the optimization process.
If you have no clue what Min-Maxing Phil Masters in the article The Vocabulary of Roleplaying said; «Min-maxing is in roleplaying, the practice of playing a wargame with the intent of creating the best character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones«. Paraphrasing this into MechWarrior Online, the concept becomes; Minimize your Weaknesses & Maximize your Strengths.
After reading this article hopefully, you will become even better at optimizing your Mech for the harsh battlefield that is the Inner Sphere.
In the beginning it was the Machine
There is a few universal considerations to keep in mind when Min-Maxing a Mech build, these are rough guidelines that in general apply to each part of the process – adaption of them into your style and how that interacts and translate into the game environment and personal experience should evolve this further.
Considerations in regards to Mech Role-, Size Category & Play-style are factors we will focus on and some others. These will influence the process later.
Mech Role
As you already have chosen the role, the considerations are depending on the purpose tied to the role – I will give a few examples below.
Harasser
Ability to deliver a high amount of damage within a short time frame or High Alpha damage for 1-2 strikes, before extracting
High Speed, to be able to disengage at will
Necessity: Ability to put pressure on enemy anywhere, then extract
Brawler
High sustained DPS and ideally high Alpha damage
High Armor, also in rear
Speed can be used to compensate for Armor short comings
Necessity: Ability to stay within a firefight for longer durations
Mech Size Category
Generalized for Min-Max in regards to each size category, this disregards unique specifics for each Mech chassis and variants.
Light
Strength in Speed
Limited hard points potential and space
Small profile
Low amount of armor
Firepower potential Low
Medium
Strength in Speed
medium hard points potential and space
Medium profile
Medium amount armor
Firepower potential medium
Heavy
Good amount of hard points and space
Large profile
High amount armor
Firepower potential heavy
Assault
Slow speed
Great hard points potential and space
Medium profile
Best Armor potential
Firepower potential Extreme
Play-style
Here the considerations are in regards to your personal play style, as it is individual. Breaking it down into what is the strengths and weaknesses as a player.
Example:
Pro: Utilize Terrain
Con: Terrible Aim
Other Considerations
Most mentioned within this part here is not the most apparent perhaps - understanding and applying them to the maximizing and minimization process offer perhaps the greatest impact on your battlefield performance.
Terrain
Understanding how terrain affects gameplay, combined with your play style will affect your efficiency and perhaps even design philosophy if you want to adapt your play style to take advantage of the 3D landscape as a defensive mechanism.
Terrain impacts torso mounted weapons to be able to be brought to bear consistently, also at certain angles prevent them torso mounted weapons even to be utilized
Terrain offer protection, a ridge is effectively extra HP if you take cover behind it
Terrain break lock, reducing time opposing pilot have to deduct analyze of your arsenal or areas to focus on due to previous damage
It is more to terrain than this, but with a better understanding of terrain in mind, the considerations are also more apparent
Main arsenal on Arms and/or combined with Fire and Forget weapons
Minimize the chance of losing vital intelligence of your opponent
If not utilizing terrain or arsenal choice, the ability dictate were the fight happens to maximize strengths, by speed or range.
Speed
You have most likely heard speed equals life, now understanding why it equals life and how to offset that edge if someone has that advantage is something to consider even for a large Atlas pilot as much as it is for a Raven pilot.
Comes with a cost of a large engines taking up valuable tonnage and/or critical locations
Speed advantage offer seize ground advantage and tactical redeployment
Ability to choose engagement and disengage
Speed offers protection, but not if you are slow paced or predictable
With the above points in mind, there are some clear considerations
What do I loose & gain by being faster than the average Atlas/whatever?
How can I offset the lighter Mechs advantage being faster than I am?
Utility
What does utility add to your Mech; Impulse weapons make it harder to hit you from one target consistently, doesn’t mean the two others next to him is affected – But the opponents time to kill is increased in most cases. Other utilities as equipment & modules also are considerations to keep in mind, such as a 4x zoom, etc.
Time to Kill
The variation in time to kill depends on your arsenal and your Mechs capability, for instance an Atlas center torso have 124 total armor, so the total damage from front would be approximately front- or rear armor added to 64 internal structure points and 10 hit points for each internal structure you potentially destroyed before coring that section.
So overall, with the knowledge from above, reasoning becomes with default armor you would need to do 156+1 damage to destroy an Atlas from the front to kill it. With 15.6dps and 100% accuracy, it would take you 10 seconds to kill it. Incidentally, with a Mech with alpha ability of 97 damage - it will only take two salvos only to kill an Atlas with 100% accuracy depending on cycle time it might be quicker even if DPS is lower!
(Headshots I believe by experience hitting opponents indicates to me somewhere in total of 35dmg to kill by a direct hit (18 Head armor + 16 Internal Structure + 1 to go over 0))
Minimize your Weakness
Here for some each consideration is painful and hard as you are working with a limited amount of critical slots and a very restrictive weight limit, but it impact your survivability overall hence it often is the most important aspect. As long as it does not take away your ability to do your battlefield role what you do here is perhaps the most important step of your entire optimization process, just remember evaluate then reevaluate as changes are applied.
Armor
But keep in mind to gain a small amount of tonnage depending on Mech certain locations can sacrifice armor to improve ability to deal damage by more ammo and so forth. Some Mech types can in general get away with lowering armor significantly depending on battlefield role, in general not recommended.
Armor is your ability to soak damage, before taking damage to anything critical, in general having this high is best way to go, to optimize distribution of the points is what will be gone into further detail to illustrate the minimization of weakness in armor distribution on cost of strengths of high front armor on an Atlas.
Minimize Weakness s process from default value on Atlas to Bilbo’s distribution on his build:
Section: Default Bilbo Atlas
Head 18 18
Center Torso 92 84
Rear Center Torso 28 40
Right Torso 64 54
Rear Right Torso 20 30
Left Torso 64 54
Rear Left Torso 20 30
Right Arm 68 68
Left Arm 68 68
Right Leg 82 81
Left Leg 82 81
Changes at torso is were the most apparent benefits happen to the very little cost to the protection in front 5.2% health to improvement in the rear of 13,33% increase in health, now separately those numbers are not magnificent. Considering the most common alpha strikes abilities (65 = 3 shots on both armor values) and the proportional increase in time to kill from rear, versus the near if none existent loss in survivability against the extreme alpha strike builds (87 = 2 shots on both armor values). The reduction in time to kill is less than half a second from a 15dps baseline (152hp = 10.2s versus 146hp = 9.72s) the improvement is immense, in comparison to near none noticeable difference in reduction of survivability in front. Doing this balances the strength and weakness of the Atlas armor quite well.
Heat
Minimize the effect heat has on your efficiency on your gameplay is to first realize it consist of two components; threshold & efficiency, which affects your ability to deal damage and move around. Overheat initialize a overheat immobilizing your Mech and make it incapable of doing anything.
Heat efficiency – Is a balance between the dissipation rates of heat and the gain towards threshold before overheating - Higher the better efficiency.
Heat Threshold – Higher threshold means ability to deal damage consistently at a high DPS rate or X number of Alpha Strike your able to do before overheating.
Hence for quite a few builds (read: nearly all) need to optimize this with consideration to what kind of way you are dealing damage, it will be gone into further detail in damage section.
Speed
In a larger Battle Mech there is an issue that your slow, but are you slow in consideration to the comparable Mech as an Atlas, hence going for a bigger edge minimize your weakness by offering:
Ability to redeploy to a more strategic position
Utilizing terrain by removing opponents ability to utilize hull mounted weapons and speed makes you harder to hit on terrain, even slow
Ability to choose engagement
In comparison to an Atlas or slower Mechs by being faster, those advantages are minimizing the weaknesses of the build and offering more flexibility.
Utility Equipment, modules & certain weapons offer versatilities that compensate for weaknesses, but what do you give up by taking them in strengths and what do you gain is not necessarily beneficial overall.
Utility Weapons
Overall weapons with impulse value offer shaking of enemy Mech making it harder to hit you overall increasing the time to kill for that individual Mech, the trade you do is that weapon either doing less damage or generate more heat than a comparable weapon. Also all weapons with a form of utility have travel time.
Equipment
Equipment that offset weaknesses such as ECM offering protection against LRM missiles and others, the protection value usually come at cost of weight and slots. Evaluating the value and necessity of the equipment in comparison to the impact it has by removing or reducing other elements in the build such as heat efficiency and so forth.
Modules
Some modules reduces weakness and increases awareness, the consideration for modules in general will be in considering the other modules impact improving the strength and compare it to the impact the minimize weakness of the other in the build as there is limited module slots. Equipment that increases amount of slots most likely be introduced.
Maximize your Strengths
If there is an easy part, this is it. Make your Battle Mech able to do best possible to maximize the ability to do damage and fulfill your role requirements for instance; Scout, Harasser, Skirmisher, Protector, Harasser, Long Range Direct Fire Support, Artillery & Assault.
Damage
In MechWarrior Online, you have to understand a few basic things to optimize you damage potential.
First, there is three ways of hitting the target, weapons with Hit Scan, Indirect fire and direct fire with travel time.
Second, the way you want to deal damage as in DoT- or direct damage weapons
Third, how you want to apply it as burst damage, consistent DPS or alpha strikes.
Lastly, which range brackets you want to be able to output damage.
So with that in mind, time to kill considering what primary target you have to be able to kill alone such as Assault, Heavy, Mediums or Lights, Heat Threshold and time to overheating is factors that need to be accounted for while optimizing your damage output, breakdowns to follow. Last to consider is which range brackets you need to be able to deal damage depending on purpose of the build.
Burst DPS
Focus here is to deal the most damage in the shortest timespan possible before disengaging to cool off, variation of Alpha strikes, different weapon rotations or sustained DPS combined with alpha strikes is most common used ways of dealing damage.
Who uses it: Skirmishers & Harassers primarily, sometimes assault
Maximize it: What is the main target for this build, how much damage to you need to deal multiplied with 1.5, then figure out time to overheat – Balance it out so your able to deal that amount of damage in shortest time possible while not overheating until dealing the desired damage.
Heat: Heat Threshold ideally be highest possible and dissipation best possible as dissipating heat quickly means quicker back into the fray.
Weapons: Weapon types as energy weapons and missiles that are shot and forget is most desirable, as easiest to use and hit with, but lower damage overall – ACs, UACs and SRMs in general for high DPS, but harder to hit target while moving.
Consistent DPS
Focus here is to keep a sustained damage applied to target, so ideally you want to be near heat neutral, but nature of being heat neutral your damage output most likely is reduced by such a great margin that your contribution value to the team effort is greatly diminished that offset of risking a overheat is more valuable. Finding the balance so you can consistently fire but not overheat is imperative.
Who uses it: Brawlers, Harassers & Defenders
Maximize it: In general increasing the time you have to fire is what increases the damage potential, but it is easy to forget that you need to have a consistent high DPS that it has killing power on its within reasonable time. Having countermeasures to put off the eventual overheat while being able to deal damage is also major factors.
Heat: High heat threshold and good heat efficiency is one if not most important factor to maintain DPS, hence balancing it and have cooling off options as chain fire, meaning your still dealing damage while cooling off, even if at a reduced capacity.
Weapons: Weapons that are near heat neutral of have a consistent predictable heat buildup, such as Gauss Rifle, SRMs, lower range of LRMs, most energy weapons is most desirable.
Alpha Damage
Focus is focused damage to pinpoint location to deal maximized destructive power, key focus killing power in as few shots as possible.
Who uses it: Heavier Brawlers, Assault & Support roles
Maximize it: Weapons that deal most possible damage within the period to reach heat threshold, generally in an extreme short timeframe and also needs to be able to kill target Mech frame of intended build role within that time period through alpha strikes and variation of other strikes.
Heat: Generally often disregard, but highest possible Heat Threshold for least amount of weight is primary goal hear, side benefit is naturally good dissipation.
Weapons: Generally, heaviest weapon of any weapon category, but the build needs to be able to utilize all of them within desired range bracket.
Useful tools to calculate damage:
Excel heat spreadsheet
Heat Mechlab
Speed
In Light, Medium and certain Heavy chassis and Assault chassis Mech you have an advantage of speed, either in general to all or to comparable other Mechs of same weight category, hence it is a maximize consideration as it offers a formidable strength for most builds if it does it better than the counterpart. How much you give up dictates if it is a strength or weakness for you. So going for speed as in if you capitalize on speed as strength by maximize without giving up too much it offers:
Harder to hit, meaning a longer lifespan
Utilizing terrain by removing opponents ability to utilize hull mounted weapons
Ability to choose engagement
Ability to disengage at will
Ability to dictate when and if an battle ends
Ability to react and respond on entire battlefield
Henceforth it becomes strength hard to ignore if your Mech chassis offer the higher end of the speed spectrum.
Utility
Equipment & modules offer versatilities that improve strength of the build, but what do you give up by taking them in minimization in comparison to gain does not necessarily become beneficial overall for the build.
Equipment
Equipment that offer versatility or reduce time to kill overall improve battlefield impact such as Beagle Active Probe offers reduced time to gather intelligence, giving pilot critical information quicker to pick right target and disabling the target quicker by targeting correct section. Now it is quite hard not to justify any improvements in that area, but the cost of weight might affect other things as heat efficiency or protection and so forth by space and weight cost alone.
Modules
Some modules improve strengths of the Mechs role and battlefield versatility, the consideration for modules in general will be in considering the balance of modules that minimize weakness and maximize strengths. Then strike a balance between them, as there are limited module slots,
At the end, it came to be the Deus Ex Machina
If you manage to strike the balance between the min-max aspects, you should have one of the more formidable Mechs out there. If its optimized towards your individual play-style even better Battle Mech as the machine becomes an extension of you – if you find the golden ratio you most like have created the Deus Ex Machina, congratulations you are a master.
This article a long piece as it stands now, it is as short as I could possible make it, as I tried to include most primary topics in optimization that applies generally to all builds, but trying to touch base on considerations that might factor in on more specialized builds - to cover all this article size would increase dramatically.
Obrigado Crank !
Edited by JTBlack, 08 December 2012 - 06:45 AM.
