IraqiWalker, on 03 June 2014 - 05:34 PM, said:
I'm running mine with DHS. Helps quite a bit, especially if not fully elited.
This to the max. Double heat sinks are a must on all 'mechs with how MWO handles heat capacity and heat sinking. Switching to doubles doubles the heat capacity and dissipation speed of all ten of the mandatory in-engine heat sinks just to begin with, which is huge.
Alianton, on 03 June 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:
but it seems kinda wasted to use an orion as an lrm boat...
So don't. Orions with LRMs work best when they have other weapons- use those other hardpoints. Whether it's the
ON1-V Fireburst with its ER Larges to keep up the ranged damage after running dry of missiles or the
ON1-VA Quarterback with its high mobility and LB10-X/2ML combination for mashing lights and hunting pre-crippled 'mechs, there's absolutely no way I'd ever run an Orion as a
boat, of all things. If you want a Heavy that's boating missiles, you want a Catapult or possibly a Jaeger A (although even that's iffy).
Part of the point of using an Orion rather than something else is that you have the variety of hardpoints and thus the variety of weapons that a specialist 'mech like the Jaeger DD, Catapult A1, or Thunderbolt 5SS simply can't load up.
Every single 'mech in the game has a niche, determined by its combination of hardpoints, tonnage, engine rating, arm actuator setup, and physical construction- not all of these niches
needed filling (Huginn, Golden Boy, Locust, QKD IV-4, Griffin....) but all of them
are niches that exist.
The Orion, in fact, has the unusual state where each variant is capable of filling different niches from the others thanks to the middle-of-the-road hardpoint basis- a trait shared with the Thunderbolt, Battlemaster, Hunchback, Trebuchet, Awesome, Cataphract- and a few other 'mechs I'm sure. For the most part these 'mechs are either generally panned (Trebuchet, Awesome) or have only one or two variants that see common play and the others get neglected because they don't function the same as the popular ones (Hunchback, Cataphract, Battlemaster).
If you want to lean on your energy weapons in flexible arm mounts, the ON1-K serves that purpose. Energy weapons are relatively light but hot, so it goes well with a higher-rating engine without needing to use an XL as badly, but still has the one ballistic and two missile hardpoints to keep a variety of backup weapons- this one does well with one big bang-cannon and a quartet of energy weapons for longer-range or longer-duration work- maybe some LRMs for backup.
The ON1-M Orion leans a little more to missiles, and with a Center Torso missile hardpoint makes much better use of a Standard engine than the other Orions do. Mount SRMs in all hardpoints and chain-fire them to reduce missile-loss and you can really pound out the damage. Using a standard engine also lets you chuck a massive AC/20 in the right torso for serious bang time- making it probably the best brawler of the five Orions.
If you want a high missile tube count, the ON1-V is a safe bet, with it's 15-20-15 missile slots. It also has dual right-torso ballistic mounts, so it can chainfire AC/5s, or pull off a surprise over-under LB10-X shotgun if you mount a standard engine. This tends to be one of the most ammo-dependent Orions, but that lets you invest less in heat sinks and engine -rating-, sparing tonnage for high-tube-count missile racks or a pair of autocannon.
If you're looking to chain-fire smaller missile racks, the ON1-VA has the same tube count as the V, but in four hardpoints instead of three. This is amazing for a chain of LRM-5s, as you can learn to time yourself so as to pull a constant chain of missiles into whatever target you feel like. Alternately, it makes a hilarious light-hunter with Streak 2 racks, particularly if you use an XL engine to make it fast and throw an LB 10-X in that right torso just to really tear off those little armsies and legsies. If you don't really care for missiles, though, stay the heck away from this model.
The Protector is kind of hilarious, because it's a K with two extra hardpoints- which lets it mix the Dual Autocannon nonsense of the V with an even larger quantity of weapons. If there's an Orion that needs an XL engine to use its full set of hard points, this is the one- particularly with that high-mounted left shoulder energy. On the other hand, you can accept being slow as tar and just pack in the weapons super-hard, and come out with an Atlas D that's been put in a trash compactor, which is amusing. As an important note- assuming that you're basing your engine rating on the speed you want to go at, the Orion, at 75 tons, is
more efficient in tonnage spent on engine and gyroscope than an Atlas going the same speed. By losing 25 tons of 'mech (and going down a weight class) with a 53.5 kph post-speed tweak engine, you're only losing 9 tons of weaponry- and coming out of the bargain a
much smaller target to shoot at with an also vastly reduced C-bill cost.
'The Orion' doesn't have a purpose in the sense that 'The Highlander' has a purpose (go ahead and check, while the exact number of tubes and hardpoints varies, all Highlanders are the same except the P and the Heavy Metal- and the P trading energy in for ballistic on the right arm just isn't much of a change, so really the Heavy Metal is the big different one. The others are all Arm-cannon, beam shoulder, missile shoulder, missile arm, in that same order. They're very much good for the same things as each other.)
Orions are not one 'mech with minor mostly-cosmetic variances like Highlanders and Victors, they're not only generalists but they're diverse generalists, with different tendencies each.
-QKD-CR0
Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 05 June 2014 - 02:26 AM.
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