25 replies to this topic

[Blue Hymn]

Longtime Awesome Pilot here. Just bought the Pretty Baby to see if there were any viable ways to make it effective for the current meta. So far, no luck, and a lot of losses due to its strange hardpoints and the unusual deceleration quirk it has. I was wondering if there were any experienced PB pilots out there that can give some tips or recommended build for this unusual variant?

[Wrenchfarm]

Oh dear. Maybe you should have asked BEFORE sinking the cash in?

I have a PB and I've never found a build for it that I really thought made it work. Loading up a superfast XL (I use an XL385 since I had it for the 9M already) with two LLAS (or LPLAS depending on the patch) and 2xSRM4s in the arm and an SRM6 in the chest gives you a moderately okay strike mech. You basically have to wait until the battle is half over and try to bullcharge a wounded or isolated mech - a tactic that depends on your team doing well, and the enemy being idiots.

LRMs can be moderately successful. 2xLRM5s in the arm (anymore and the small tube count makes them wasteful) and an LRM15 or 20 in the chest backed up with ERLLAS or PPCs with a TAG in the head. It can work okay, but not as good as other LRM biased mechs. Plus, you generally have to sacrifice speed/mobility, it's supposed big attribute.

I've been begging for PB buffs pretty much since it's release. An extra energy slot in the arm would do WONDERS for the mech, or another missile in the chest. ECM would give it a niche (surprise heavy flanker). As it is, the awkward arragment of hardpoints, the limited tubes on the arm missile slots, and the near-superfluous head energy make the PB a dog of a mech.

I wish I could refund mine, I really do.

[Odnir]

The Pretty Baby was the third mech I purchased on my Davion profile and in my experience works best either as a charge-in-second brawler or a nearly-stock multiple range mech.

If you wish to do the former you should learn to torso twist a lot, and part of doing that having a sense of where you are walking without actually looking in the direction you need to travel. Practice that a bunch. Show your best-armoured component to your foes when travelling and when it gets worn down, switch. You can then pack a decent missile punch plus your choice of assorted weapons. Pulse lasers work well with torso-twisting as you need to present your full front profile for an even shorter amount of time.

But personally I like mine in a mostly stock configuration. I bought a bigger engine, paid for endo-steel, dropped one heat sink from the original total and added a second SRM4 to the arm. When the enemy is far off I use the PPC and large laser and LRM 15. I do not rush to engage. I stay with my team and at first I stay in the middle or back. As we get closer in I start using the pair of SRM4s and the medium laser to supplement the large laser (and PPC when not too close). That's pretty much it. Pretty Baby is a rare sight out there because it is fairly unforgiving of an error. The hardpoints do not lend themselves well to configurations with simple to operate power.

[Bront]

Didn't someone with the Awesome heavy "tourny" with a PB? If you can dig up that thread, try his build, though the meta has changed since then.

[NRP]

The build I had the most success with:

XL400
2 LLs
ML
3 SRM6s

Granted, this was back when SRMs were mean. I wouldn't try this build now unless I was really drunk.

[kesuga7]

the guy who ran the awesome pretty baby had a very similar build to mine

which is why i remember it without looking it up lol


Might not be the exact thing but its close

• One large pulse laser - arm
  
• 2-3 medium lasers
  
• 2 srm 4
  
• 1 srm 6

big engine - high armor



wanted a pretty baby myself first to see if it was any good but hero mechs are pricey

but this is what i came up with in smurfy lab

Standard engine version

Spoiler

• 72.4 kph with tweak
  
• 19 double heatsinks
  
• 400 armor
  
• 56 firepower
  
• One large Pulse laser
  
• 2 Medium lasers
  
• 3 Srm 6 artemis
  
• 300 srm ammo

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...a2cee0b1720da0b

Edited by kesuga7, 18 October 2013 - 02:02 AM.

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

It is a truly terrible mech because it has too few hardpoints and can only go fast in straight lines. The best build I have come up with is: 2ERLL, ALRM20, ALRM15, TAG and an XL300. Hang back and hope to avoid becoming the centre of attention. It suffers from the problems of all LRM builds in PUG matches, in that your success very much depends on what the rest of your team do.

[lashropa]

So many nay-sayers. Think of the PB as a stock Awesome that subs an LRM15 for one of the PPCs. Add in two extra missile slots on the arms, the largest engine capacity possible, and aside from the wonky deceleration quirk, you have a solid platform.

I run 2 ERPPCs, an LRM 15, 2 SSRM2s, and a small pulse laser. It does just fine and shines quite well at extreme range.

3 med/ pulse, 3 SRM6 is a fun brawler if you know how to weave in and out of a battle.

Edited by lashropa, 18 October 2013 - 02:59 AM.

[Rushin Roulette]

The best trianing for the AWS-BP is to play a few hours of Microsoft Train Simulator... after a while you will get a feel of when to start slowing down so that you dont go too far with your PB.

[Wrenchfarm]

I'm not trolling or trying to make you feel bad when I say it, but try to get a refund. Use that MC and get yourself a Misery, or a Dragon Slayer, or put it towards a Boar's Head. It turns out they are fairly flexible to accommodate people unhappy with their purchase, so long as you haven't played a ton of matches in it. By the time I got around to asking for a refund for my PB I was told I had played too many games in it (which I think is bull, but whatever).

The PB is bad. I love Awesomes, I wanted an Awesome hero so badly I put aside my doubt and bought it. But it just isn't worth the money. I do better in my 9M and 8Q than I ever do with the Buyer's Remorse.

[Sniper09121986]

As a Phoenix owner I daresay that the best Awesome right now might be a Thunderbolt. It has similar set of hardpoints including a lot of missile tubes, and it still does fairly well with an XL engine. You might give that a try if Phoenix sales didn't stop, it's all quite a bargain.

[AgBaphomet]

PRETTY BABY

XL340
2x ERPPC
ALRM10
2x SSRM2
21 DHS
448 Armor
BAP


Stay with your main group and unleash your PPCs and one ton of ammo for the A+LRM10. 21 DHS will keep it somewhat cool. SSRM2s for hitting light mechs.
i even managed to brawl an kill some Victors which came to close... so i blew off their sides with the PPCs.

@ Rushin Roulette: :-D good advice

[RickySpanish]

Bront, on 17 October 2013 - 08:07 AM, said:

Didn't someone with the Awesome heavy "tourny" with a PB? If you can dig up that thread, try his build, though the meta has changed since then.

I saw a guy called 4lex who ran a PB with LRMs in one of the tournys, however it was a terrible build for anything other than whoring damage numbers (back when the tournaments counted pure damage as the highest stat) and relied on the enemy team making some pretty huge mistakes - as all LRM heavy builds do. LRMs were also far more powerful back then.

The PB is effective depending on how min-maxy the enemy team's builds are. The closer you get to the current jump jet / fire support meta, the less relevant your PB will be. You can certainly peak around objects and snipe with your one gun arm, but why take up an assault spot if that's what you're relegated to doing?

If however you aren't consistently meeting long range / jump heavy teams, the PB performs very well in a cavalry role due to its high speed and ability to shove massive amounts of heat sinks into a large XL engine that would take up too many critical slots otherwise. I run mine with an ER-PPC, large laser, medium laser, 3 SRM 6s and an XL 380 with something like 6-7 double heat sinks (5 in the engine).

[Koniving]

Blue Hymn, on 16 October 2013 - 11:44 PM, said:

Longtime Awesome Pilot here. Just bought the Pretty Baby to see if there were any viable ways to make it effective for the current meta. So far, no luck, and a lot of losses due to its strange hardpoints and the unusual deceleration quirk it has. I was wondering if there were any experienced PB pilots out there that can give some tips or recommended build for this unusual variant?

If you have experience with the 8V and the 9M, think of the PB as merging the two. Some like to use it to spam streaks and rush in, but we both should know the risks involved with that.

So here's what I can tell you. Minimum engine size: XL 385. Here's why: Pillars on tourmaline desert. Most of the in-climbable pillars there are now your territory. One of the biggest "drawbacks" to the Pretty Baby is it is very slow to stop. Fun fact: This applies to going up hill too. With a bit of zig-zagging you climb 55 and 60 degree slopes with incredible ease. Once up there, who looks up anymore? Exactly! Rain fire and brimstone down upon them!

Hope that gives you some ideas.



Good luck.

[Blue Hymn]

Thanks guys for the feedback!

Koniving, on 18 October 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

If you have experience with the 8V and the 9M, think of the PB as merging the two. Some like to use it to spam streaks and rush in, but we both should know the risks involved with that.

Good luck.

I don't have much experience with the 8V, but I remember the 9M's issue with rushing headlong into trouble. With ghost heat, you can try and design the 9M with the normal PPCs but...
Gotta be careful when people start aiming for your XL engine.

So far, I've tried out some builds people have recommended here, and I discovered that this build works rather well for me:

Face Hugger

It's geared towards close range brawling. While you sacrifice a lot of your speed, the STD engine really helps increase your survivability, while the LPL and srm6's don't produce too much heat during intense combat, which you can quickly perform selective firing while waiting for your LPL's to cool down. If you hang back a bit to provide protection for your team - the lrm mech, or the slow-moving atlas per se - it really works great as a defender for them whenever any mech tries to get close for combat.

Edited by Blue Hymn, 19 October 2013 - 12:48 AM.

[Koniving]

Blue Hymn, on 19 October 2013 - 12:47 AM, said:

Thanks guys for the feedback!



I don't have much experience with the 8V, but I remember the 9M's issue with rushing headlong into trouble. With ghost heat, you can try and design the 9M with the normal PPCs but...
Gotta be careful when people start aiming for your XL engine.

So far, I've tried out some builds people have recommended here, and I discovered that this build works rather well for me:

Face Hugger

It's geared towards close range brawling. While you sacrifice a lot of your speed, the STD engine really helps increase your survivability, while the LPL and srm6's don't produce too much heat during intense combat, which you can quickly perform selective firing while waiting for your LPL's to cool down. If you hang back a bit to provide protection for your team - the lrm mech, or the slow-moving atlas per se - it really works great as a defender for them whenever any mech tries to get close for combat.

SRM detection's been pretty bad lately so I personally won't be staking my life on them. The twin LPL is usually pretty good.

Far as the 9M goes, regardless of Ghost Heat or if this used a proper heat threshold (note 1), you'd never be able to fire those ER PPCs at the same time. The Awesome fires a chain of blasts at a maximum rate of 6 ER PPCs within 10 seconds, noteworthy with a 100% chance of shutting down. 5 ER PPCs with a 85-ish% chance of shutting down (mainly due to a poor piloting roll or it was moving). Of course, in official rules you can only fire everything once per 10 seconds. Note 2.

Note 1

Spoiler

(the TT / MW3 limit is actually 30 with everything based on 10 seconds of cooling; MWO you can get a threshold of up to 90 at a loss in the end [after all skills] of 0.09 cooling per second, big deal.) This means you'd only be able to fire 2 ER PPCs at once anyway and instantly shut down. It's very natural to chain fire all your weapons within a 10 second time period. The actual act of alpha striking is "rare" and on tabletop, "impossible" as no rule accounts for it. It's always firing one weapon at a time, once, in sequence within 10 seconds.)

Note 2.

Spoiler

(Though actually lore-wise, lasers fire several times to generate the total of damage they do per turn. 95% of ACs are burst-shot [high and low caliber] or fully automatic [mostly low caliber but some high caliber], with only 5% of ACs being single shot. There is, to this date, still zero proof of a single shot AC/20 on ANYTHING except a 100 ton tank designed to solo an Atlas and have a chance of winning, and an MWO-style UAC/20 single shot + double tap is found Exclusively on the Clan Tech Ebon Jaguar, also known as Cauldron Born. The fabled Hunchback II-C everyone is afraid of? Officially its twin UAC/20s are 6 shots to do 20 damage [3.333333333333333 per shot] in an MG-style [in MWO's 4 second rule, it would fire 6 shots in 4 seconds, meaning 1 shot every 0.67 seconds] with Ultra Mode being twice the firing rate to squeeze in 12 shots within 4 seconds [40 damage per UAC/20].

That isn't so scary when it totally loses pinpoint and has to sustain a hold onto its target for 4 seconds to do 20 to 40 damage per UAC/20, now is it? It's actually like someone chain firing a laser on you, but with SHAKE and awesome sounding DAKKA! Yay! That's if MWO used lore instead of what Paul felt like.

Now, far as the 8V... It is literally an odd combination of weapons that are awkward exactly like the PB. Except the missiles are all in the RT, and there's 2 energy in the LT. Nothing arm mounted for the left arm. It's awful as a close range fighter and instead excels at long to mid range combat, with a couple of wimpy lasers to make up for it when things get too close. Its essentially like real Awesomes in TT, support mechs. Due to the arrangement of weapons they were actually awful at brawling even in tabletop where mech sizes didn't matter.

Everything said... The only thing I really don't like about your build aside from it being slower than most Awesomes, is that you cannot take advantage of the PB's greatest features. Why have a mech that can climb things that not even the JJ-mechs can climb, if you aren't going to use the weapons and speed necessary to do so?

Think about this, you've got the ONLY mech that can reach the top of 90% of the pillars in Tourmaline Desert. You know, way up there! Where most people especially brawlers can't reach. Your only worries would be LRMs (back down from the ledge, let them hit the rocks) and PPC/Gauss fire (take out the snipers).

At some point in time, slap on a 385 engine standard or XL, doesn't matter, and run on the Testing Grounds on Tourmaline. Practice climbing pillars. Try the same thing with any other mech and once you realize that only the PB or the 9M can do it... grin to yourself and think of evil things to do.

Good luck. Hope you don't face any lights -- those SRMs are worthless against them unless the code got better with this patch.

[NRP]

@Blue Hymn
Regarding your "Face Hugger" build, you might as well just use an 8V, which will fire all 18 SRMs in a single salvo (unlike the PB).

IMO, if you aren't taking advantage of the PB's one unique trait (speed), then there is absolutely no reason to use the PB at all.

Edited by NRP, 19 October 2013 - 09:16 AM.

[Voivode]

PB is my favorite mech. I use it as a second in brawler or fast strike mech. Here's what I run.

XL395 (88KPH with speed tweak), DHS, Endo-steel, 1xLPLS, 2xML, 2xSRM6, 1xSRM4 with Artemis.

It has a good balance of speed and firepower. Don't be the first thing the enemy sees (it's easy to be first big target seen in an assault going 88kph) and don't commit until you see the other brawlers commit. Use the speed and maneuverability to force other assaults into a spin. This mech will fail if you stand still in a fight. Never stand still. This is the ADHD brawler.

Edited by Voivode, 19 October 2013 - 09:27 AM.

[JRR1285]

PB is also one of my favorites. It's a quirky mech that can be brutal at times. I run an XL340 with an ERPPC, LL, and 3SRM6's with Artemis. I know it's slower than most builds but it works for me. I think I need to reimagine its loadout for the most recent meta but it's still fun.

I run it almost everytime I boot the game up. I need to finally plunk down the C-Bills for a XL385 but I just can't do it lol

EDIT:

Just noticed the Boars Head actually comes with an XL400. Once it goes on sale it's the most economical way to get that big engine and a cool mech on top of it. Pretty Baby would fly with that.

Edited by JRR1285, 19 October 2013 - 09:07 PM.

[Elizander]

JRR1285, on 19 October 2013 - 09:05 PM, said:

I run it almost everytime I boot the game up. I need to finally plunk down the C-Bills for a XL385 but I just can't do it lol

380XL is better value than 385XL unless something changed.