104 replies to this topic

[wintersborn]

Streaks kill you and your 190XL like swatting a bug, oh wait..............

This mech in its current form is a waste of a player period.

[MonkeyCheese]

wintersborn, on 15 October 2013 - 05:05 PM, said:

Streaks kill you and your 190XL like swatting a bug, oh wait..............

This mech in its current form is a waste of a player period.

Not really ran into a all streak kintaro today and I simply outran it, and that was 150kph non speed tweaked, tweaked is just under 170kph.

[silentnukerecon]

Yes I agree this mech is worthless as it is right now. We need to drop the heatsink requirement down to around 6 to 8 for mechs under 25 tons.

[MonkeyCheese]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

That right there is why i believe that stupid Heatsink requirement is there to begin with. Not for any love of the MW Universe lore. Even if 86kph is pointless in a light mech, its still a light-mech with 3 LL's. I am assuming that is what they 'dont' want to see running around. So to make it were it is almost impossible to do, they threw in the 'requirement' of the 'extra' HS's.

The side-effect is that it completely negates almost ALL setups from even being possible in order to make the Locust even 1/10th usefull.

Cidada does it better anyway and at 131kph
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...7d2b70aeb30af6b

and to match the speed it is http://mwo.smurfy-ne...5290ad5afec35ac

without the 10 heatsink requirement the best thing to do would be add bigger weapons ammo and heat sinks, crazy weapon loadouts are just crazy.

and finally I know its a big barn wall but 85kph 9m aws with 4 LL and better heat. http://mwo.smurfy-ne...53318671b891e46

[Coralld]

As long as you have a friend with ECM and or BAP with you the Streak Locust is a lot of fun. I even went mano-E-mano with a Jenner and came out on top.

[Gwydion Ward]

Coralld, on 15 October 2013 - 05:20 PM, said:

As long as you have a friend with ECM and or BAP with you the Streak Locust is a lot of fun. I even went mano-E-mano with a Jenner and came out on top.

A 'light' mech, that 'requires' another light mech to be usefull... is a broken mech.

[Corvus Antaka]

it just needs to go faster. MASC ie.

also, TONNAGE LIMITS

[SweetJackal]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 02:49 PM, said:

Just for Reference.

Here's my current 1V(P): LCT-1V

Look at 'all' of that empty space. Nearly 2/3 of the mech is left empty. Now, im not saying i should be able to fill up every single slot on the mech. But there's 4 heatsinks there, that are taking up 4 tons, + 4 slots. That may seem like a 'small' penalty, but As you have all pointed out. Its a 'light' mech. Anything done to chop out its legs ontop of it already being small is just stupid.

Its already small, It already has a light tonnage limit. Why in he world would you take away 4-6 MORE tones then the pitiful amount it already has?

A light mech will never make use of all of it's slots in weapons or equipment. It doesn't have the tonnage.

The answer is changing the infrastructure of that mech so that it hits the tonnage for less and the crits for more. Endo should be the first thing you get.

And 3 tons of machinegun ammo? You really came prepared. /sarcasm

In all honesty, every mech in the game is required to have 10 total heatsinks as a minimum. Some of these heatsinks are built into the engine. You do pay for the tonnage for those heatsinks in the engine even if they don't take extra slots.

What you want to do is devote yourself to one weapon system on the locust. Lest we forget that there is a Laser Model and a Missile Model. For the 1V I would remove the machine guns and ML, add endo and then squeeze in an AC/2 and ammo. Right now half of your offensive tonnage is devoted to ammo, 4 machine guns will be hard pressed to eat through your 6000 rounds.

The problem isn't with the mech or the 10 heatsink rule, it's with how you are trying to fit it right now.

[Gwydion Ward]

SuckyJack, on 15 October 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

A light mech will never make use of all of it's slots in weapons or equipment. It doesn't have the tonnage.

The answer is changing the infrastructure of that mech so that it hits the tonnage for less and the crits for more. Endo should be the first thing you get.

And 3 tons of machinegun ammo? You really came prepared. /sarcasm

In all honesty, every mech in the game is required to have 10 total heatsinks as a minimum. Some of these heatsinks are built into the engine. You do pay for the tonnage for those heatsinks in the engine even if they don't take extra slots.

What you want to do is devote yourself to one weapon system on the locust. Lest we forget that there is a Laser Model and a Missile Model. For the 1V I would remove the machine guns and ML, add endo and then squeeze in an AC/2 and ammo. Right now half of your offensive tonnage is devoted to ammo, 4 machine guns will be hard pressed to eat through your 6000 rounds.

The problem isn't with the mech or the 10 heatsink rule, it's with how you are trying to fit it right now.

origonaly i only had 2 tons of mg ammo.

Added on the other boxes out of pure frustraition because i couldnt sort out anything else that'd work.

And if im going to be forced to use only 1 single weapon as your sugjesting, i might as well simply remove all armor from the arms, (as thei'll not be used at all) and get an ERPPC. Atlest then i'd not have to worry about ammo supply and can actualy make 'use' of those forced-installed 4 heatsinks. But then i might as well sell the XL engion and use a 100 as with a long-range weapon, its not like i'd have to be manuverable.

Edited by Rhapsody Repine, 15 October 2013 - 06:51 PM.

[SweetJackal]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 06:49 PM, said:

origonaly i only had 2 tons of mg ammo.

Added on the other boxes out of pure frustraition because i couldnt sort out anything else that'd work.

And if im going to be forced to use only 1 single weapon as your sugjesting, i might as well simply remove all armor from the arms, (as thei'll not be used at all) and get an ERPPC. Atlest then i'd not have to worry about ammo supply and can actualy make 'use' of those forced-installed 4 heatsinks. But then i might as well sell the XL engion and use a 100 as with a long-range weapon, its not like i'd have to be manuverable.

Cutting armor on the arms (or even the entire side of a mech) is common practice for lighter mechs. I do it on Mediums for some builds as well.

And you will want the speed that you can get. It helps getting into position as well as ducking away. Being a sniper doesn't mean you can turret up and just sit there, you'll be baiting yourself to a light hunter if you do that or asking for return fire from their sniper builds.

The V1 is designed around ballistic hardpoints and the AC/2 does eat up a good portion of that tonnage, that's why I only included one as that would be all you could fit. If you were to take something lighter, LLs, MLs and the like, then you could boat it a little.

Just be mindful of having tissue paper armor. Don't treat yourself like a Jenner.

[Gwydion Ward]

SuckyJack, on 15 October 2013 - 07:52 PM, said:

Cutting armor on the arms (or even the entire side of a mech) is common practice for lighter mechs. I do it on Mediums for some builds as well.

And you will want the speed that you can get. It helps getting into position as well as ducking away. Being a sniper doesn't mean you can turret up and just sit there, you'll be baiting yourself to a light hunter if you do that or asking for return fire from their sniper builds.

The V1 is designed around ballistic hardpoints and the AC/2 does eat up a good portion of that tonnage, that's why I only included one as that would be all you could fit. If you were to take something lighter, LLs, MLs and the like, then you could boat it a little.

Just be mindful of having tissue paper armor. Don't treat yourself like a Jenner.

Yea, wasnt tryig to be a Jenner or any type of 'brawler'. Was actually trying to set it up as a 'surgan' type mech.. find a enemy mech thats in structure somwere.. run in, unleash all 4 mg's. then run away. Only problem with that... is that everyone seems to instantly target the Locusts... and having negative armor dosnt help any.

I even took off the Medium beam and put a TAG in place... that didnt help much either as trying to get into a position were its usefull ends up simply getting me cut off from everyone else.

[Tickdoff Tank]

While you do, in fact, pay 1 ton for each "required" heat sink, every engine that requires external heatsink has had it's base weight reduced by 1 ton for each heat sink that it must mount. So, you ARE getting weight free heatsinks, it is just that the free tonnage comes with the engine.

[OneEyed Jack]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

Funny... as when i add or remove those 4 'extra' heatsinks im REQUIRED to have... i can see my total tonnage go up or down by that 1 ton that each heatsink weighs.

These 'extra' heatsinks are NOT the ones you see on XL200+ engines. that are 'automatically' added to your mech as 'engine' slots that automatically fill up x# of slots in your side torso's, and counted as part of the total weight of your Engine.

These are 4 'extra' (litterally extra) Heatsinks we must ADD to our mec's (if anyone uses the XL160 like i do). That takes away an 'additional' 4 tons beyond what the XL Engine itself uses.

MWO rolls some of the other mandatory components into the engine weight. Aside from that, if the engine requires "extra" Heat Sinks, it is that many tons lighter than it would have been if they were using the original weights. So the 160 Std engine (plus cockpit and gyro) would be 11 tons, not the 7 you pay. Then the Heat Sinks would be weightless, but require crits. The mech lab would probably explode if it had to force you to place things without buying them (because they were already there, but needed to be placed), so they reduced the weight and force you to buy them separate.

[Gaan Cathal]

Xanquil, on 15 October 2013 - 04:05 PM, said:

The crit space "tax" is there for a reason, it is a balance mechanic.

What, exactly, does it balance?

Or by 'balance mechanic' do you mean 'arbitrary holdover from TT with no RT relevance'?

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

That right there is why i believe that stupid Heatsink requirement is there to begin with. Not for any love of the MW Universe lore. Even if 86kph is pointless in a light mech, its still a light-mech with 3 LL's. I am assuming that is what they 'dont' want to see running around. So to make it were it is almost impossible to do, they threw in the 'requirement' of the 'extra' HS's.

Sadly, it's actually worse than that. At least that way they'd've thought about it. The problem is that this isn't a decision that was made by the MW:O devs, it was just assumed and copy-pasted from TT as part of the mech construction rules without proper analysis of whether the restriction was still necessary in a pilot-limited (not BV-limited) environment.

SuckyJack, on 15 October 2013 - 06:47 PM, said:

In all honesty, every mech in the game is required to have 10 total heatsinks as a minimum. Some of these heatsinks are built into the engine. You do pay for the tonnage for those heatsinks in the engine even if they don't take extra slots.

I'm seeing a lot of people explaining that it's a universal rule, or that the tonnage is subtracted from the weight. That's not even slightly under dispute. The fact is, however, that the 10 HS minimum rule is just unnecessary for MW:O, and it becomes very apparently so when fitting Commandos, Locusts and other small-engine rating lights.

There isn't a single chassis in the game that will become overpowered by dropping the requirement to install out-of-engine heatsinks up to the 10 HS marker. All it will do is give a slight buff to some very, very weak mechs and stop that particular bit of the mechlab looking like it was designed by a neurotic chimp on acid to anyone not au fait with the TT mech construction rules (probably upwards of 70-80% of the population, honestly).

[Lykaon]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 01:50 PM, said:

Ive seen quite a few people complaining about how the Locus is useless as even a scout since it has no ECM ability, or jumpjets... or, well, anything that makes a scout a 'scout' for that matter.


My Current 1V(P) has 4mg's, 1 medium laser.... and thats it. I cant fit an AMS + one box of ammo on it due to the weight limit. I could take the ml off it, but then im 100% limited to how much MG ammo i can carry with no non-ammo based weapon to use afterwards. (which would honestly be hilarious, as i'd be running around with 4 Heatsinks.. and no energy weapon at all)

And even to fit those 4 MG's and the single ML, i had to strip most of its extremity armor off + use an XL engion.

Thoughts?

Firstly how someone defines a scout mech and how someone else defines one is usually different.Ask 3 people get 3 answers.

But at it's core a scout needs to be fast enough to break contact once the enemy forces are located,Small enough to be difficult to target and to maximize terrain cover.

A locust has these attributes so it can scout.Is a Locust an ideal scout? nope that would be a Jenner with 4 moduel slots and ECM but we don't have that either.

If we still had repair and rearm it would become evident that a Locust that costs 1/3 the price of a Jenner is a C-Bill saving scout for a mechwarrior on a budget.But thatis more of a future speculation than a right in the now point.

As for Locust builds?

When you have all the weight saving techs crammed in a locust has around 7 tons of weapon payload.

4 MGs=2 tons MG ammo= 2 tons Med Laser = 1 ton AMS = .5 ton ammo AMS = 1 ton total = 6.5 tons

I went for a long range harasser build with a bit of MG support for the Locust V.

Endo steel chassis
Ferro Fibrous armor
170XL engine
2 DHS RT
2 DHS LT
MG RA
MG LA
Ammo MG head
ER-Large Laser CT
Fill out armor to preference.

The Locust M I built for a more pure recon roll.It needs enough fire power to defend against other lights and with no ECM needs to bring an umbrela for LRMs.

So 5 sml lasers and 2 AMS with 2 tons AMS ammo.

Still working on the Locust S variant may try a twin LRM 5 TAG combo for kicks or a more serious 4x SRM2 & Medium laser combo for back blasting larger mechs.

Edited by Lykaon, 15 October 2013 - 10:57 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

*sighs* again..i KNOW its a 20 ton mech. But even at 20 tons, simply trying to 'fit' it with anything is almost impossible.

Im not asking to make the thing = to that of an assault mech, or remove 'all' HS restrictions, or give it more 'slots' (if anything it could do with LESS slots, as what it does have is excess of what it can actually do anything with). Just give it 1 or 2 extra ton's of 'use'. Thats it.

Lights have been being equipped with 10 sinks for 30+ years, including the Locust. Both single and double. Its called a weapon balance for a reason. What is not working right is the Solaris cyclic rates... which sucked on TT as bad as it does here.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 16 October 2013 - 03:43 AM.

[Aym]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 01:50 PM, said:

And even to fit those 4 MG's and the single ML, i had to strip most of its extremity armor off + use an XL engion.


Thoughts?

Try Endo and Ferro, you can get full armor, MPLas, 4 MG's and 2 tons of ammo...
LCT-1V

[Jakob Knight]

Zyllos, on 15 October 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

Please, do not perpetuate this myth.

There is absolutely no difference between MWO and CBT engine weight differences to outside heatsinks needed.

The only difference between MWO and CBT, is that the cockpit and gyro weights have been added to engines, then the weights of heatsinks needed outside the engine was subtracted.

This means for the engine type, rating, and 10 base heatsinks, have the absolute same weight and critical slots taken in both MWO and CBT.

The only engine that does not follow this is the 100 XL (I believe, have to go back and check my numbers again) because it would technically have "negative" weight.

EDIT: This is not to say that I agree with what PGI did, I don't. But their implementation makes the numbers correct.

Let me clarify my statement.

In the actual construction rules, all engines came with 10 Heat Sinks. Those heat sinks, double or single, were considered part of the engine and included in the weight of the engine. Some might have to be allocated critical slots if the engine were below a certain rating, but those heat sinks were never considered when tonnage totals were tallied.

MWO, by contrast, forces players to allocate heat sinks that would normally be included in the Engine and pay the cost in tonnage that normally would be part of the engine (rather than simply including them with it). While the numbers work out as stated, the difference is in automatically having the tonnage as part of the engine and having to manually account for it.

I understand why this was done, and am not denying that the math all works out, only noting that the method for doing so is slightly different than in the original source material. It's a different system for doing the same thing, in other words.

[Almond Brown]

Rhapsody Repine, on 15 October 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

*sighs* again..i KNOW its a 20 ton mech. But even at 20 tons, simply trying to 'fit' it with anything is almost impossible.

Im not asking to make the thing = to that of an assault mech, or remove 'all' HS restrictions, or give it more 'slots' (if anything it could do with LESS slots, as what it does have is excess of what it can actually do anything with). Just give it 1 or 2 extra ton's of 'use'. Thats it.

This might work given some patience while maintaining a steady 300m buffer.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c48abd7e7eef915

Khobai, on 15 October 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

Then why is it even in the game? if its supposed to suck then theres no reason for it to exist.

For the locusts existence to be validated it has to be equal to a Jenner. That doesnt mean it needs to be equal in combat. But it needs to be able to contribute equally to its team winning... even if it means performing non-combat roles.

LOL! That could be said for players too... Why even let the ****** ones in? They just **** things up for the leets right? LOL!

[FupDup]

Almond Brown, on 16 October 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

LOL! That could be said for players too... Why even let the ****** ones in? They just **** things up for the leets right? LOL!

Players have the ability to get better over time. Mechs do not, unless directly patched by the devs.