201 replies to this topic

[Zolthar]

I mostly play medium mech, with different role depending on the loadout.

But they are mostly brawler, good at killing lights or assaults.

[Kraven Kor]

I still tend to fair better overall in mediums over heavies or assaults, barring actual damage done.

My Centurion AL and Hunchback 4P consistently get me more kills and more wins than when playing in Cataphract or Atlas.

And me in a light mech is basically just handing free points and money to the opposing team, to be honest.

"Good gunner, terrible pilot."

[Sears]

ciller, on 26 February 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

I was in this match (obviously), also in a centurion and we sorta kinda basically won it for our team. That is what Mediums do. I admit we were pulling a bit more weight but still, this is a pretty consistent picture of our 4-man drops. Mediums (Centurions) rock.

Two centurions works really well. Same for the D variant with big engines. If you do a counter circle with the other it makes it quite difficult for the enemy mech as you can be both behind and in front of them. This will be a harder tactic once collisions are in of course.

[Yokaiko]

Man I want collisions back.

I'll put the x3 SRM4s back on my -2D and "commando clothesline" every frigging Raven from here to Andromeda.

[BoydofZINJ]

MischiefSC, on 25 February 2013 - 06:30 PM, said:

Padding stats for assault mechs and 3Ls. And splatcats. And boomcats.

If you go against a heavier 'mech that is playing a specific role that you are not - then yes you are goign to lose. I.E. You fight close range against a splat cat. However, mediums are very odd 'mechs. You can use them as heavy scouts. Some of their speeds can rival or surpass lights - such as the treb-M with 325XL. Likewise, you can also outfit your medium to have the sheer firepower of a heavy - i.e. Hunchies. However, they have more armor than a light and no ECMs (except for the Circada) and they lack the armor of a heavy.

So how do I play them?

I either play anti-light or surpise tackler. You are not meant to be the meat shield and tanking enemy hits from enemy Atlas players and/or splat stalkers and splat cats... However, if you let your enemy engage and you sneak behind them - you can easily destroy rear armor and enemy 'mechs before they know what hit them. Likewise, I also play them with the speed to match a light and the armor and firepower to kill one without being crippled. See an enemy raven with ECM that is hurting your team - grab a 325 XL Treb-M and travel over 110kph and kill that raven before he or she knows what hit them.

[Fate 6]

Redmond Spiderhammer, on 25 February 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

my centurion has more firepower than either of my cats

^
I've seen several C1s with the same loadout as my Cent AL

Edited by Fate 6, 26 February 2013 - 10:36 AM.

[Sahoj]

Primarily a Centurion pilot here. YLW mostly and lately the AL.

AC20 or 2x Large Pulse Lasers. Chest-Hugging opponents tends to take away your team's firing lines.
Arm articulation is good, mobility is good - can often get solid shots in cramped quarters with
my teammates and add damage. In Alpine it's especially fun using those arms to shoot to the top/bottom
of a mountain while opposition mechs can't fire back because their primary kit is in their torso.

Light mechs don't run under me so easily and in the AL the extra arm articulation will chase them all the
way to the bottom corner of my screen.

[Fate 6]

Jade Kitsune, on 25 February 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

The role they're "Ment" to fill in the battletech lore is operation buddy to lights and heavier units. They're ment to have the speed to be one of the first mechs on the frontline, the armor to take a few hits while dealing out their own, then they're ment to fold back in with the Heavy's and Assaults to provide additional punch while the bigger machines deal out the real hurt. Mediums provide something of a backbone force.

The ideal medium should be quick, and decently armored with some ok firepower, nothing stellar, they're jacks of all trades. Ment to lay out hurt, then as I said, fold back into the pack and let the bigger stuff shine on what they beat up.

But the problem with this idea in Mechwarrior:Online is everyone wants the kill, no one wants to just put some damage on something and ignore it after... the KILL is king for players. And that's the wrong mindset from an in-universe perspective. but as a game, what can you do?

This is really well said.

I generally make it to the front first, do some quasi-scouting for my team, take a few shots at the enemy, and then wait for a full engagement. A good medium pilot can harass really well during a fight, able to get behind slower mechs and take out their soft spots or distract them from shooting at the bigger mechs on your team. Slower mediums can provide excellent fire support if they stick with the heavies and assaults and stay alive (my 4P with a 200std and a **** ton of lasers, just have to last a long time to get out that infinite potential damage).

And then there's Alpine, and you realize all the heavies and assaults on your team are practically dead weight, and mediums are the kings.

[rdmgraziel]

Lights are the speed freaks; fast, but low on armor and firepower (in theory anyway)
Assaults are the tanks; heaviest armor, most firepower, low speed.

Mediums and Heavies are weird mergers between those two ideals, with Mediums having superior mobility and Heavies having superior firepower/armor, and people LOVE bonus firepower/armor and the speed isn't as awful as it is in say, an Atlas.

That said, some mediums manage some pretty good firepower, and I've personally found my centurions *feel* vastly more durable than my Dakkaphract (shield arm ftw). (Catapults also seem vastly more durable than 'phracts to me, but that may just be opinion)

They're not ideal for trying to run out and take on the whole enemy team, but in the midst of a group fight they're amazing backup armor/firepower for heavier, slower mechs; who would bother with a Centurion when they've got a brawler-spec Atlas up in their grill? Mediums have this lovely rep for being "meh, that's just a _____" so they get ignored when more deadly targets present themselves.

I've also managed to successfully duel an Atlas or two in my Centurion, but that's not really the norm, and depends on how beat up we both are, the Atlas pilot's aim, and what he's running.

[Jman5]

Mediums are essentially your Cavalry. You use them to quickly reinforce a spot and tip the balance in your favor. This also means they are good at flanking entrenched positions and disrupting artillery/sniper mechs. One of the things I like to do in my hunchback is get behind a stalker or atlas with LRMs/ballistics and just harry him. I might not be able to kill him or stay too long, but it keeps him from bombarding my team for a minute or two. Their reactive nature make them quite good if you're the kind of pilot that likes a degree of independence while playing. The difficulty is learning how to turn that into an asset and not a liability.

I also find that a lot of overlap you see with fast heavies/strong lights requires them to use an XL engine. On the flip side, many medium builds can slot in the maximum standard engine.

Edited by Jman5, 26 February 2013 - 10:55 AM.

[Vlad Ward]

Orzorn, on 25 February 2013 - 09:50 PM, said:

That's not how it works.

If a side torso is destroyed, you're dead.

Besides that, engines can not be crit destroyed currently. It doesn't do anything.

As for Vlad, you're right that people go to extremes, but keeping it in focus important. People's hyperboles tend to make ti hard to grasp the real points; Mediums torso twist and arm more flexible than their heavier cousins (Hunchback has an absolutely giant twist+arm radius), while packing heavy punches (55 damage is not light damage by any means. Not even my Dragon builds put out that much. Not even a gausscat with 4 mlas puts out that much, although theirs is more pinpoint), and having lower profiles than other mechs (although in some cases, like the Centurion, not as much). You claim they're squishy, but built properly (As in, not being a freaking ***** and stuffing XL engines into an already well armed and armored mech), can last a long time in a fight.

I think it all adds up, bit by bit. Sure, they might be more demanding chassis of their pilots, but I think they're like balanced sword. It doesn't have to look pretty, do huge amount of flashy things, it just needs to work. I think mediums work, and with an efficiency I wish even my Dragon had at times.

You said it yourself; mediums piloted by good players can do well. Well are they underpowered and we're just bringing them up to a higher level, or are they just a higher skill floor chassis (much like the Dragon) that takes more effort before you see its potential? Perhaps not. Perhaps they aren't as strong as they ought to be (although I've no idea, besides smaller models, in which they could be seriously helped along).

Well, if that's the case, just keep that in mind when one of us are backing you up in a medium next drop.

The problem with high skill floor builds is that their skill ceiling is not necessarily any higher than the next Mech's; nor is their skill:performance curve. The AWS-9M/PB is an extremely high skill floor Mech, but its skill ceiling is certainly no higher than an AS7-D-DC or STK-3F.

The builds that suffer from low skill ceilings are extremely few and far between; typically only things that rely on Streak SRM2s like the old A1s and the current RVN-3L/COM-2D.

In just about anything else, a pilot that can do well in a Dragon/Hunchback/Awesome/whatever will work absolute miracles when put behind the wheel of a better Mech.

MustrumRidcully, on 25 February 2013 - 11:28 PM, said:

But isn't this just a sign we need weight-matching working again?

Though it is strange that even without weight-matching, it seems light seem to find their role, but Mediums don't. Or is that impression wrong? Is it jus the remainder of lag shield? Or is speed really that valuable? And how can we give Mediums something of this value?

I don't disagree at all. Part of the problem is the fact that speed and size are multiplicative components of overall agility. Medium Mechs may be "fast" compared to Assaults (90kph vs 65kph), but they're so big that the speed advantage can't overcome the decent player's ability to aim at the larger target. It doesn't matter what speed a target that big is running, so long as the larger Mech has the torso/leg twist ability to horizontally track them, they are dead. Pretty much anything below 130kph falls into this category with Assaults.

Giving Mediums more speed is always a good thing, as they're way slower than they ought to be right now, but the root cause of the problem is their model size. Larger models absorb more splash damage and concentrate more of that splash damage on the same components; they're also significantly easier to hit with pinpoint damage. 50 ton Mechs that are taller than 70 ton Mechs and just as wide just don't have the survivability they should have.

I wish they were smaller. I really do. But PGI has put their foot down against that, and I just don't know what else to do about it. You'd think they'd have taken a bloody cue and made the Trebuchet not-huge, but that didn't seem to pan out either. At least it has JJs and a better speed cap than its siblings.

Padic, on 26 February 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

I dunno. Isn't that good enough? If an excellent pilot can excel in the chassis, what more can you really ask for?

So, to stay on topic - what do these "medium-pilots-who-carry-their-weight" use their mechs for?

As mentioned earlier, any pilot capable of excelling in a Medium would work wonders in a Heavy, Light, or Assault. It is a handicap. Whether that matters or not to an individual is unimportant, since we're talking about objective game balance and not what X or Y person chooses to do with their spare time.

General Taskeen, on 26 February 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

You min/maxed something. Yawn. I applaud people who at least attempt stock build or stock-like designs. Its more challenging and builds true skill.

Running with a perpetual handicap doesn't make someone a better player. It just gives them an excuse when they lose and/or don't show up on the leaderboards for anything.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 26 February 2013 - 12:04 PM.

[kalami]

I have only played HBKs and now a 7k (elited cataphracts a while ago and moved on). I usually simply find an Atlas and I am his wingman; he softens up and I will flank and join back up as we fight.

He shields me from the big guns and I can attack his target when he's cooling down. I find that the HBk's excel after the initial engagement if you can avoid getting focused fired at match start you can easily dominate softened mechs with your speed and loadout.

I run my 4J with 1 ERLL, 4 ML and 2 SSRM2's. It's rated at 82 and get to 90 with speed tweak; ive run this build for quite a while now with pretty good success. I will bring out my 4P when I want to do some extreme focus laser firing.

[Nathan Bloodguard]

I guess I'll add that i play a near stock centurion A, and have sense moved on to a modified AL. I still move with the stock engine, so an alpha on my side doesn't kill me nor worry me much. I've finished many a match with half my mech just gone, but still contributing to my team. One of the other tricks that should be noticed (especially with the near stock weapon load) is to find the sweet spot for all your weapons to be in effective range (about 200-300m). You get to shoot the lrms, ac 10 (Or the 4 medium lasers i put in the AL) and any lasers you have left. The only real swap I did was double heatsinks, and changing out the lrm 10 for two lrm 5 for more armor and/or heatsinks.

[eblackthorn]

I usually out damage everyone in my centurian 9A 3xsrm 6 + 2 ML + 98kph = awesome

Edited by eblackthorn, 26 February 2013 - 05:06 PM.

[Cferre]

Mokey Mot, on 25 February 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

So, you talk the talk but can't walk the walk. If you are as good as you make out, you would realise the XL engine is so buffered, that you have the same survivability as you do with a std with less firepower, armor and speed. Besides, if a mech has that sort of speed, and can still get alpha'd, then it's being piloted wrong.

You overestimate yourself. Maybe you're on coc.aine when you use your Hunch. I dunno. That negligible little speed boost you got with that silly XL will not save your ***. I cant remember how many times i ended up with one or non side torso left and still continued with a srm or a med laser left. You would be long gone with your... XL.

Afterall, we are not talking about an Trebuchet 3C with a XL390 lol.

Edited by Cferre, 27 February 2013 - 08:00 AM.

[ciller]

XL's in mediums are a BAD thing in general.

In specific, there is potential for them to be used tactically in a team setting to good effect, though I wouldn't do it myself.

[Harrison Kelly]

General Taskeen, on 26 February 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

You min/maxed something. Yawn. I applaud people who at least attempt stock build or stock-like designs. Its more challenging and builds true skill.

The last half of the argument is complete fail.

If that were true, then skill in football would be achieved by wearing sandals instead of cleats, because by not equipping yourself well, you would be making it more challenging, and to your own detriment.

That's right, I said it.

People who bring bad 'Mech builds are doing the equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot before the match. That Stalker with one of every energy and missile weapon? Terrible. The stock K2? Worthless. Don't tout using junk 'Mech builds as an indicator of "skill" to excuse your inability to do well. War does not assign Hipster Points, and you were given a fully-functional Mech Lab for a reason.

[DocBach]

Harrison Kelly, on 27 February 2013 - 08:23 AM, said:

The last half of the argument is complete fail.

If that were true, then skill in football would be achieved by wearing sandals instead of cleats, because by not equipping yourself well, you would be making it more challenging, and to your own detriment.

That's right, I said it.

People who bring bad 'Mech builds are doing the equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot before the match. That Stalker with one of every energy and missile weapon? Terrible. The stock K2? Worthless. Don't tout using junk 'Mech builds as an indicator of "skill" to excuse your inability to do well. War does not assign Hipster Points, and you were given a fully-functional Mech Lab for a reason.

I managed to get to the top 10 medium slot using a non-cheese, non FOTM build. I bought a CN9-A for the tournament (owned a 9D with the stock XL engine and a gauss rifle), didn't have much cash so I sold the LRM-10 for two SRM-6's and double heat sinks. I wanted to compete in the tournament without using a cheese 'Mech just to see how well I could do.

I didn't run the 3x SRM-6 large engine build because I couldn't afford a large engine, and when I could I decided I really liked the setup with the slow standard 200. The AC was great for making long range shots, or putting holes in stuff right where I wanted them, and the SRM's would exploit the damage.

So yes, I think an amount of individual skill can make up for not using kraft macaroni, at least a little bit.

Edited by DocBach, 27 February 2013 - 08:30 AM.

[EvangelionUnit]

backup for others, to cover their six'es and focus fire on targets of opertunity, at least thats the way how i try to play mit YLW

[Denno]

From a fatty's perspective:

Mediums are for bending me over as I am trying to defend myself against another angry fatty.

In other words, SupriseNonConsentualButtSex.

Edited by Denno, 27 February 2013 - 08:48 AM.