12 replies to this topic

[Champion Hero]

Hi all
Just after a bit of advice with regards to my current 9M build.

AWS-9M

At present, I'm fairly happy with the build, although feel that perhaps it needs a bigger punch up close... It could be my play style but I'll detail that in a minute..

I always find the AWS to be a fairly fragile mech for its class, so have opted to play it as a medium range-brawler.

I was running 3 L.Pulse, but found that the lack of range on them was meaning I was having to brawl far too early, with many mediums and heavy mechs able to do considerable damage to the fragile torso on the Awesome. As such, I have swapped them out for std large lasers, so I can start wearing down from 900m.

On average, assuming I survive an entire match, the above build can pump out around 450-750dmg over the duration (786 being my personal best).

The main issue I have is when caught of guard, or forced into an early brawl, with an Alpha of 43 I feel that I simply don't have enough of a punch to make the attacker think twice and back off.

With regards to managing heat, I use the 3 LL's in 1 group on chainfire, medium LL's on a separate group (g.fire) and the SRM4 on the 3rd group.

I try to rotate these, and will only fire the mediums if I have enough heat-threshold. Naturally, the same is true for Alphas. I also run Coolshots 6/9 and use when engaged in a brawl where a shutdown would be fatal, or if I need the extra punch to finish off.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could improve this? I have toyed with the idea of using one of the ERPPC's that came with it for the extra range it gives, but the excess heat and slot requirement would mean I'd need to drop the SRM or a Medium Laser. There is also no damage increase as far as I'm aware?

On that note, do lasers suffer from diminishing returns once past their optimal range? I notice that the LL have a range of 450, with a max of 900. What damage do the lasers do at 900m? Do PPC's keep their max damage potential regardless of range?

Any advice welcome

(Disclaimer: I reserve the right to move the ammo around anywhere I want, just in case any of you are thinking to shoot my legs out

Edited by Champion Hero, 16 April 2013 - 10:57 PM.

[Koniving]

PPCs deal 10 damage. LL only deals 9 damage. You get the range increase with either type of PPC but it requires more tons to use and more crit slots.

Honestly the main issue I see is heat, but you've already told us how you've dealt with it.

Lasers past their range do suffer diminishing returns. You can fire out to twice the range it says, with it steadily dropping to 0 at the end of that double mark. So say LL's fired up to 450 meters do full, and 900 they do almost 0 if not 0.

Personally I own every Awesome except the 9M. Yes that includes the Pretty Baby. If I carry a large laser it's a last resort weapon. I generally favor ER PPCs or PPCs on them. The RS and V have one to two ER PPCs and lots of LRMs. The 8Q has 3 ER PPCs. The T's still factory default I haven't played with it. Finally the Pretty Baby sports ER PPC, 2 LL's as a backup, and LRMs.

Lordred who takes the snapshots of me that I usually spread, told me today that his 9M actually runs a similar but faster build to his 8Q, which is built like mine with 3 ER PPCs and no other weapons. The current state of SRMs makes them barely usable.

PPCs, unlike ballistics, only go out to twice the range (like lasers). Past their range they steadily drop to 0. Standard PPCs also have a 90 meter minimum range where the lower your distance gets the lower the damage gets.

Edited by Koniving, 16 April 2013 - 11:09 PM.

[MonkeyCheese]

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...e880aa71ddf62e4

My build
3ML 3LL 1 srm6
max engine
almost max armor 480/494
20dhs all up (including engine)

firepower of 51
heat efficiency of 1.21


When compared to your build
-uses up all the weight
- 8 more damage
-basicly the same heat disapation for 8 more damage
-slightly less armor
- 2 more 2srms
-removes artemis and ferro

art is pointless for 6 missiles coming out of 2 tubes (3 groups of 2 is not that hard to aim)
ferro takes up too many critical slots (your build has 6 tons free that mine turns into heatsinks and more firepower)

Hope you like my build that I swear by and I hope something here helps.

Edit: I brawl with this thing up in peoples faces and take the alpha shot of 51 damage whenever I can. fragile with a xl as you would know but perfect for getting kills and ripping the legs off pesky light mechs.

Edited by MonkeyCheese, 16 April 2013 - 11:26 PM.

[Champion Hero]

Cheers for the replies guys. I did actually have an 8Q running for a while but sold it after the beta went open (stupidly I might add, as I lost the MC for it). I did like the PPC build, but found it to be a bit of a glass cannon as it never had backups and PPC's wern't as sought after as they are now. perhaps with the XL in it it may be better (like the 9M)..

Interesting build Monkey - how do you find your 9M holds up in a brawl though without the damage reduction from FF? I know it doesn't add a huge amount (gief reflective armour plz! - although with those Ac40's running about I guess that wouldn't help..) but every little helps no?

The amount of slots on this thing does annoy me, so perhaps the extra sinks would up the DPS a bit..
I've always said that wasted weight should be made up in speed (im sure MW4 calculated this in) but I believe its been said that MWO will never have this mechanic - a shame really.

With regards to SRM, why is everyone up in arms about it? Looking at my stats, considering I only run an SRM4, it seems to be doing fairly good damage.. would you suggest its a waste of weight at the moment, and would be better spent elsewhere?

SRM 4 101 3,194 1,292 40.45% 09:35:52 2,757
(not sure how to link profile stats?)

[Roughneck45]

Champion Hero, on 17 April 2013 - 01:21 AM, said:

Interesting build Monkey - how do you find your 9M holds up in a brawl though without the damage reduction from FF? I know it doesn't add a huge amount (gief reflective armour plz! - although with those Ac40's running about I guess that wouldn't help..) but every little helps no?

With regards to SRM, why is everyone up in arms about it? Looking at my stats, considering I only run an SRM4, it seems to be doing fairly good damage.. would you suggest its a waste of weight at the moment, and would be better spent elsewhere?

Oh no, they got you with the wording....

FF does not give you any damage reduction. When it says "more armor per ton" it simply means that your armor weighs less. You are not getting any defensive benefit from FF, just weight savings at the cost of critical slots. On assault mechs, the criticals are much more important than the weight reduction.

Endo also saves you more weight in all circumstances, so if you need more weight and can spare the cricitcals always get endo first. FF should be put on after endo if you still need the weight and can spare the criticals. 9/10 times only lights will be able to make use of both.

The artemis is not worth it because the mech only has 2 missile tubes, meaning the srm 4 fires as 2 groups of 2, which makes them more accurate by default. If the launcher had 4 tubes, letting all the missiles fly at once, it may have been worth it.

In general, artemis is only worth it if you are using LRM's, or if you are using SRM6's, as they have the worst spread and make the best use of the increased accuracy.

EDIT: knew something was weird! I responded with some builds in the duplicate post lol.

Edited by Roughneck45, 17 April 2013 - 11:59 AM.

[Koniving]

Roughneck45, on 17 April 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

EDIT: knew something was weird! I responded with some builds in the duplicate post lol.

Best to copy/paste what you said there to here. Duplicate threads get deleted more often than merged.

[Roughneck45]

You have so much leftover tonnage, with ferro and endo. Get rid of the FF, that upgrade should pretty much never be taken on assaults, or almost anything other than lights for that matter. The artemis upgrade isnt worth it for one SRM4 either, but thats more pilot preference.

My personal opinion, just focus on the Large energy weapons and the best heat you can get with them to keep the damage up.
AWS-9M
or
AWS-9M

is what I would run.

If you are comfortable with the heat management, you could replace any of those LL's with ER LL's. Also, since they dont use missles, you could leave the artemis upgrade on there and not waste c-bills removing it.

I just find that 3 LL lacks enough punch to scare the enemy, and taking the mlas and srm, while giving you diversity, just isnt worth it when the LL's will work just fine up close.

All weapons have damage falloff after their optimal range.
Missiles do 0 damage outside their optimal range.(they just explode)
Lasers will do damage up to 2x their optimal range.
Ballistics will do damage up to 3x their optimal range.
As far as we can tell, the damage drop off is linear. The further out it goes, the less it will do.

Edited by Roughneck45, 17 April 2013 - 07:40 AM.

[Koniving]

Btw. "FF" armor is best utilized on light mechs to afford additional armor and almost always is paired with endo-steel.

[Fuggles]

most of these guys have hit the key points you can tweak, personally ive been back and forth on the 9m so many times since i bought it back in December and i keep coming back to 3LL, 1ml (head) and 3 srm4's. personally i run mine with an xl380 so i get 2 more DHS than this, but heres how i would run yours with the 385.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c1a209570cad1e5

ive tried LPL, but they leave you with no range, ive run this with one or 2 ppcs, ive run all lasers, this just seems to be the best compromise for my play style.

[Champion Hero]

Roughneck45, on 17 April 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

Oh no, they got you with the wording....

FF does not give you any damage reduction. When it says "more armor per ton" it simply means that your armor weighs less. You are not getting any defesive benefit from FF, just weight savings at the cost of critical slots. On assault mechs, the criticals are much more important than the weight reduction.

Ahh this I did not know!? Thanks for the clarification. My HBK-4G is probably wasting critical's with this too then! Didn't it used to add dmg reduction against ballistics in previous titles though?

Some interesting builds from everyone here - thanks guys. Seems like I'll need to drop FF and have a tinker then to free up some slots to fill the weight

[Roughneck45]

Champion Hero, on 17 April 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

Didn't it used to add dmg reduction against ballistics in previous titles though?

Not to my knowledge, but I also think it was worded in the same confusing manner in those games.

Now that i think of it, there were armor types that were better against specific weapon types. Reactive and Reflective armor. Those don't exist until 3058 and 3063 though, so i don't think we will be seeing them in game.

Edited by Roughneck45, 17 April 2013 - 12:16 PM.

[Burnsidhe]

Ferro-Fibrous has never had any additional damage protection beyond having more armor points per ton.

There were two additional types of armor introduced in Mechwarrior 4, but those armor types are not in this game.

[Blacke]

I run the following and do pretty well with it.
1 ERPPC
2 PPC
3 Streak SRM-2
20 Double Heat Sinks

I regulary do 600 to 700 damage and it is a good long to mid range brawler with decent close range capability when force into a fight. I haven't had much problems with heat management as long as you don't go way overboard.