43 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

Roughneck45, on 08 October 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

You could put PPCs and streaks on it.

Can't.

C4 only allows 2 slots for both weapons. PPCs are 3 slots for one weapon.

[Enialis]

Can't really rely on other people in pugs if you want to LRM boat. If you expect to sit 1km away and have people hold locks so you can shoot indirect, you're not going to do much except shoot a lot of ammo until a couple lights come and kill you. If you stick with the pack, your teammates can cover you and/or distract the enemy. You'll also get more line-of-sight locks (Artemis does nothing for LRM's when fired indirectly). Whether or not that counts as "true LRM support," you'll be more of an asset to your team.

Bottom line is you need to be self sufficient in a PUG. 100% LRM boats are going to get murdered unless you're in a coordinated group to cover you.

[wintersborn]

Bad thing is most bigger mechs or LRM "Boats" are so slow you are always in the back and must stick to a ECM Atlas most of the time.

I would love it if the CAT A1's were faster to compare to the KTO-18 so at least they had a viable role. The stalker line seems to be the best bet for a LRM support boat in 12 man pugs at least for me. I am trying to make a Atlas DC work but the tubes don't make for much damage.

[Bront]

I run my C4 with 2 LRM15s with Artemis, 1 ML, 1 TAG, and 2 SSRM2s with 1 ton of ammo, an XL300, and the rest LRM ammo. It's very functional, works fine in pugs, can spot for itself, and I generally do good damage even in PUGs.

When LRMing in pugs, always tell your team "LRMs here, give me targets", and sometimes you get some targeting help. It may vary, but it's there. Otherwise, LRMing is an art, and does take skill, patience, and practice.

[KIUN3]

Since I have mastered A1 and C1 Id like to add my 5 cents to the topic. This is just my opinion and suits my playstyle.
I play only pugs. Spend 400 matches in A1 learning and experimenting to go from negative KD to positive.
I mainly use:
A1:300XL, 2xlrm15 artemis, 4x ssrm2, BAP, 1x JJ, dhs, endosteel
C1:300XL, 2xlrm15 artemis, 4x ml, BAP, 1xJJ, dhs, endosteel
Both with adv seismic sensor, adv target decay, adv sensor range.
In C1 I'm at 1,8 KD which I guess is decent for 100 matches in lrm boat with loadout experiments in the mean time.
So in points:
1. You need to maneuver a lot. Lrms are easy to find so you need to be a ghost. Adv seismic helps to avoid close encounters. 82kmph + JJ gives me possibility to play hide and seek with assaults and some heavies. Canyon map is fantastic for this builds as 1xJJ is just enough to get on top of a wall. Find World of Tanks tutorial on youtube for artillery. It helped me a lot in understanding why I need to change position after few volleys. Even though I never plaid WoT ;-)

2. Don't be afraid of single light mech. See him on seismic. Keep calm. Turn his direction and:
- in A1 lock and send ssrms his way as soon as he pops out and then just stop engine to turn faster and preserve the heat. Use amazing torso twist and keep sending ssrms after him. Keep your eye on the distance meter. As soon as he starts to run away and gets to ~200m add lrms as farewell gift. If you are far from teammates and you get jumped by two ECM lights then curse them and die with your head high;-) Don't scream. They want you to scream...
You might want to try to lock on far away target and fire ssrms at them indirectly but... I am not a jedi yet. I choose to lock on someone far away and deal some more lrm damage as I die.
- in C1 do similar thing with ml. Fire 4 at approach and then cycle them in twos trying to get the small guy.
If friendlies are near, get to them, retreat 180m back and fire your lrms at the small guy who was brave to follow you.
And above all don't panic.
If you encounter very skilled light pilot then you will die of course. I have nothing but respect for those few ppl who run lights effetively in pugs. Often they win the game for the whole team singlehandedly.

3. Know what your job is. You can:
- suppress enemy snipers. But preserve ammo. Its mostly about giving them "incoming missiles" message. Unless you have target decay and they are close enough for you to keep the lock when they hide.
- scare off enemy spotters. Look around and find this spider on top of the mountain. Remember. You dont need the lock to send lrms to the place where you aim.
- support ppl in difficult brawl against stronger opponent. Look for single medium circling around assault and help him out. He will most probably score this kill anyway as lrms have magical tendency to miss the final point of internal structure so that someone else can score the kill.
- finish off or scare off lights harassers. They are not easy to hit directly but can be hurt with lrms when they are busy with your teammates.
- think strategically. Since you are not in the middle of brawl and have a little more room for thinking you should keep an eye on capping etc. With the speed of described builds you can even scout a bit to check the flanks
-of course support the push. Once you are out of your >1000 lrms be a man and join a fight. Both builds can be fairly decent help in a brawl. And with speed and JJ you can outmaneuver, in 1 on 1 brawl, middle class pilot of jaeger or k2 who feels invincible with his dakka. Just remember that K2 for example cannot aim high with ballistic so JJ can save your life. And don't be ashamed to run...strategically retreat to keep hurting the enemy. You can be easily cored in cat. If you want to stand your ground buy stalker.
It's a good idea to save ammo for one lrm volley and enter close combat. It might be enough to save your life later in the match.


4. Locks.
- keep your locks. If you break lock before the hit,and enemy is moving, you will miss. You can get the lock back, even if target disappeared for a moment and someone else locked on him. Your missiles will adjust in the air as long as you will manage to get your lock back in time. So don't change the target until your volley lands. Unless you really need to.
- you can poptart in lrmboat. Even better with adv target decay. First you spot, lock, fire and hide. Then you pop up in a second to just to keep a lock.
- Its not easy to hit moving Ecm Atlas from 400m without locks. But can be done. Ppl who call LRM players noobs,without skill, should try this sometimes before they discuss superior skill of "leading the target" with their AC. I mastered K2. There is nothing easier than scoring kills with 2AC10 + 4xML. I just like a bit slower action with more sneaky approach then dakka-hugging.
- remember that you can lock on ecm mech with Bap. It takes longer but the distance is ideal for your alpha. Just be sure that your lrms fly further than 180m.
Jour JJ can help you avoid FF with ssrms in close quarters. Use it to honor the ddc Atlas with a volley or two above the heads of your dakka teammates.

5. Distance.
Be aware of the distance at all times. Don't waste ammo on someone 985m away and retreating. Don't shoot below 180m. You just build up heat. Unless its fast light who is running away. In this A1 look for the sweet ~200m distance for alpha.

6. Volleys
Remember that ams works on one volley at a time. If you shoot ams target go for full volley at a time to loose as little missiles on ams as possible.
Cycle lrms if you want to distract someone close shooting at you, preserve heat or ammo, are unsure of the lock or you want to increase your chance of scoring a kill. I heard it's easier to hit lights this way as well.
Usually I shoot full volleys until victim is nearly cored and then switch to cycle to try to get my kill. More often then not someone will deal final 10dmg to enemy who got hit with 150 of your missiles.
Be ready to get most of the games with 300-600 dmg, 6-8 assists, and 0 kills anyway. Thats just a way of lrm boat at the moment ;-)

I agree with Bront. It takes some practice to get results.
I know its not rocket science but hope it will help some new LRM boaters out there.

[ShadowbaneX]

I think the OPs done with the basics, but if you ever revisit this to get the elites done: I know the feeling. At the start it was a bit of a slog...and god help you if anything ever got in close. That said, I did something similar, I dropped down to 15s, but since I already had Artemis, I went with Streaks as my back up. They've long since taken a nerf, but a pair of MLs and a pair of Streaks with Beagle can give lights a bad day. Here's my build if you're interested.

Beagle helps both with ECM and with the LRMs. You're generally not firing everything at once, so you can manage with only the 10 Double Heat Sinks in the Engine. AMS is obvious, but it doesn't just help with LRMs, it also helps deal with SRMs from some of those enemy lights that get in close.

I've recently (as in the past couple of days) have had a several matches in which I scored 500-700 damage with this build, although some of that was just finding a good spot (like say that mountain in Crimson Straight) and just raining down LRMs on the enemy with impunity.

[KIUN3]

I wrote it not to imply that OP doesn't know. I only want to help ppl who I have chance to spactate from time to time in catapults. And get more people to play anything else than dakka Jaeger, Ctf and K2 :-)
I like your loadout ShadowbaneX. I would only suggest moving SSRM ammo to head and LRM Ammo to leg and torso to avoid risk of explosion when your limb gets blown. When you put SSRM in the head your LRM ammo from torso will get used up first. I usually use more rear armour too and don't use AMS. Didn't miss it so far. But this is the only C4 loadout that I think gives you decent close combat chance. BTW I am so surprised when I sometimes see 6xlrm5 A1 running around in pugs. I would feel naked in it :-)

[ShadowbaneX]

KIUN3, on 13 October 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

I wrote it not to imply that OP doesn't know. I only want to help ppl who I have chance to spactate from time to time in catapults. And get more people to play anything else than dakka Jaeger, Ctf and K2 :-)
I like your loadout ShadowbaneX. I would only suggest moving SSRM ammo to head and LRM Ammo to leg and torso to avoid risk of explosion when your limb gets blown. When you put SSRM in the head your LRM ammo from torso will get used up first. I usually use more rear armour too and don't use AMS. Didn't miss it so far. But this is the only C4 loadout that I think gives you decent close combat chance. BTW I am so surprised when I sometimes see 6xlrm5 A1 running around in pugs. I would feel naked in it :-)

There's a method to the madness.

Well, ok, first of all, the armour values aren't what I actually use. People seem to do their own thing so I just leave it at default and let others customize to taste. Personally I go 12 on the sides, and 16 in the center and put everything else to the front. Max on everything save the legs which is 57/60.

As for the SSRM ammo, I prefer it in the legs. I run out of LRM ammo long before I do SSRM ammo which means the head is usually empty. The Streaks though, I don't think I've every run out of those so there's always that chance that if I do get socked in the head that the ammo could go up and kill me. This is always why the AMS ammo is in the leg, I hardly every run out, so if it's not in the head so it can't go up. That said, it's only a 10% chance and that's if the ammo bin does take a crit. More than likely the structure will be destroyed without destroying the ammo, let alone setting it of so it doesn't matter much.

The build itself, well I rather like it. As I originally said, I started off with 2x LRM20+Artemis, but found I got in a lot of trouble if anything got close. That was when I just started off (my first mech was a K2, my 2nd the C4) so I didn't have enough cash for an XL. Went with the 15s, mls & streaks and did pretty good. When I eventually got the c-bills got the xl-300 and it worked well, and gave me 4 extra tons to play with...well, less than that as I had Endo & FF. Looking it up I had 2.5 tons to play with. That became an extra ton of LRM ammo and AMS, because, why not? I suppose I could drop it and an extra half ton of armour to go up to 4 JJs, but it provides extra support so I'm happy with it.

Additionally, it works good with basics, but it works very good with 2x basics. With the 300 XL and the huge torso twist you can mostly keep up with lights circling you and for those times when you can't the twist speed is good enough that you can quickly snap back around and keep up with them. I love picking up a light and watch it closing it. I get this big grin on my face as I know that while they've probably got more close in firepower than I do, I've got WAY more armour and enough speed, agility and skill to keep up with them. BAP keeps their ECM down so I can keep blasting them with Streaks and MLs until eventually they realize they're in deep trouble and start to run. That's when I start blasting them with LRMs again as going away presents. Of course, if you get jumped by more than one, well, then things start to get dicey.

As for the 6 LRM5 A1s, those are troll builds abusing cockpit shake. Because of the low cool down and the delay in chain firing you can constantly fire them. 5 Missiles every half second for as long as you've got the ammo (not sure about the heat). The damage is annoying more than anything, but if you're caught in the open it can eventually grind you down. The most annoying part of it is the constant cockpit shake. Makes it very difficult to hit enemies that are engaging you. This is also why you see Kintaros with 5 Streaks. Sure, it's good at blasting lights, but if you set it to chain fire, you've got a pair of streaks rocking you every 0.5 seconds which means you can't hit them back. They can engage heavies and assaults and kill them simply because you can't see the enemy well enough to fight back.

[Nick Makiaveli]

The best solution I've found to LRMs in a PUG match is to announce early on, while people might actually notice, "Please press R to donate to the Orphanage for Lost LRMs" or some such. Let's experienced players know you have LRMs, will remind occasional players to press R, and might get the newbies to ask what R does.

Worst case I usually get a laugh and the occasional lock

[BigBadVlad]

Scaled my C4 ROflpult back to an LRM 60 (2xlrm20 2xlrm10) with tag and some matches go well, some don't. Usually do well when I manage to stay behind the frontline shooters and don't get caught unsupported by the enemy's lights. The build has mild armor but can take a few hits. No JJ and a bit on the slow side, but speed is not necessary when you are supposed to be behind your frontline.

I often do get 2 or 3 kills and it can take a mech down pretty quickly thanks to the artemis. Chain firing seems to work better as the individual volleys can hit CT better.

But it is defense less up close and if the enemy has multiple ECM then I have problems. It still is fun to see mech turn tail or get destroyed within a few seconds.

[DyDrimer]

AHH can tell people got brand new mechs and can't pilot them worth a snot, the LRM boats are out in force, the "stand back, dont move, hide behind a wall while some spider aims for me" boats. Guess i will have to start running my"op" light mech to back shoot them...

[LauLiao]

With an LRM boat in pugs you can do just fine as long as you take TAG and self-spot.

[Satan n stuff]

LauLiao, on 17 October 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

With an LRM boat in pugs you can do just fine as long as you take TAG and self-spot.

You'll basically always want to have this as an option, especially if you have Artemis. The grouping on that makes coring heavies and assaults a piece of cake, and you won't be easily shutdown by ECM. Taking BAP is also a good idea to counter harassers with ECM and it makes it easier to get locks near your max range

[Eaerie]

Been running a battlemaster with 2 LRM10's and 2 LRM 15's, tag, artemis and BAP. 1620 missle and 3 MLas it is tough to bring down and if you catch someone in the open trying to close on you can almost always bury them under an endless wave of lrm's. The only thing I dont like about it is the mlas are in the torso so tracking lights as they pass close to you is hard.

[Redbeard the Elder]

Here's the thing about PUGs. I run a Raven 3L set up for sniping and do 3-500 points of damage per match. I could load it with tag and narc as it was probably intended, but I inevitably get into PUGs where I'm with no lrm boats and I've crippled my damaging ability. It's just not worth it.

[Johnny Reb]

Lrm's in pugs can work just have tag and some backup weapons. Also, dont rely on long range locks.

[Lefty Lucy]

The reason why people don't hold locks for you is not because they're bad players, or refusing to hit R, or just trying to farm assists: it's because against a competent enemy holding a lock means maintaining line of sight to the enemy, which means getting focused and killed. In short: holding locks is suicide.

[Zakie Chan]

I hate it when people complain about locks. You want em, go get em!

As a 50 ton mech I'm too fragile to hold targets all afternoon while you lay back and play put the circle in the square. I have my hands full dodging PPCs and Uacs, trying to exploit weak points in the enemy lines.

Get a tag, get artemis, get line of sight and Voila! OR Get on one of the many open TS channels, group up with some players and organize an lrm lance with tags and proper positioning to ensure quick kills on enemies.

[Eaerie]

I dont get upset when others cant maintain locks. I know it is hard sometimes. I do ask that people get/maintain locks when possible though. But I have tag and prefer los just for artemis/tag to get the tight spread of missles.
I hate when at the beginning of the match when I ask politely that people assist in locking targets you get that one person who thinks you are being lazy for asking. It isnt lazy it is trying to help the team as best I can and I can help best if people help me help them.

[MortVent]

What I've found is that some maps you're able to find a good spot to assist and maneuver around for your own lock.

Other maps you're pretty much a walking target getting off random salvos and playing with your backups more than your lrms.

It also can change a lot, if a couple team mates actually work with you as a team rather than as a group of wannabe solo heroes