4831 replies to this topic

[Ovion]

I think 1-2 XL190s and an XL170 is enough between the 5 and just jumping between them.

But that's me.

[3xnihilo]

Bigbacon, on 12 September 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

at some point you'll have all 5 locusts, all with their own 170xl or 190xl and you won't have to worry about much.

Yes, this will happen I wasn't totally sold on them when I only had the 3s but the 1e won me over. The 190xl is top priority on my shopping list right now and I am about halfway there so it won't be long.

[InspectorG]

3 Locusts, now leeted! I can say i will likely never drive the V again...ugh machineguns.

I think the E will be my go-to.

[Alaskan Nobody]

InspectorG, on 13 September 2014 - 07:28 PM, said:

3 Locusts, now leeted! I can say i will likely never drive the V again...ugh machineguns.

I like my MG

[MonkeyCheese]

IraqiWalker, on 12 September 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

Leave the 3S for now. Focus on farming C-Bills and XP with the 1E, until you can afford the XL 190 or 170.

Agreed with this but the 3s can be one heck of a farmer with 4x srm2. Once people start losing armor.

[IraqiWalker]

MonkeyCheese, on 13 September 2014 - 11:33 PM, said:

Agreed with this but the 3s can be one heck of a farmer with 4x srm2. Once people start losing armor.

and I agree with that.

[Ljusdahl]

Gotta love the little buggers!

Today I got 6 kills and dealt 684 damage in my 1E. I pretty much single-handedly assassinated 2 Stalkers, 1 Shadowhawk and 1 Catapult in their rear CT's. We still lost, and I was the only player on my team with kills.
It's funny how some matches turn out.

[Bigbacon]

how do you guys do 4 srm2s and have enough ammo to do anything?

like this?
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...89cd8abec4b5784

or
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...45bf4bf78bb6852

Edited by Bigbacon, 14 September 2014 - 11:37 AM.

[Ovion]

Mine is LCT-3S
1.5T of ammo is enough for 18-20 shots of all 8 barrels, or 75 single shots in chain, plus the ML for extra punch and post-ammo running.

[MonkeyCheese]

Bigbacon, on 14 September 2014 - 11:37 AM, said:

how do you guys do 4 srm2s and have enough ammo to do anything?

All my builds are in this thread, link is in my sig.

[Bilaz]

First of all thx for the topic, i think 5-6 s pulse laser build is priceless in understanding how mech is supposed to be played. I feel that ml build more universal atm, but only once you fully understand the idea of pin-point backstabbing action. Its easy to run around wildly swinging lasers as you go - but its wrong (for locust) and would only get one killed early. I'd rather call it peek a boo than boom zoom or whack a mole - with you being the mole, trying to peek here and there and bring pain and misery to bigger and scarier mechs while they look the other way. Now not every match and not every map allow you to flank hostiles unnoticed or have isolated pockets of fighing where you can do your thing, but when you can (and it also takes some thinking and working for it) - its always nice. By the way - direwolf show how helpless assault should be against solo light - shame IS assaults are much more agile and its usually ten times harder to engage them.

Why on earth locust have 18 max armor in head? i'd rather have that armor elsewhere... i mean more than 10% of all armor in a place not likely to get hit at all. No reason to shoot there even if i'm standing still, since leg is easier to hit and without it i'm dead meat, or side torso - still death (and less armor there)... if it was known that said cabin have 5 max armor - maybe someone would start shooting there, thus saving my (now even more armored) legs and side torsoes. (given that i hardly remember being less than 40% - good chunk of precious hp also resides in useless head).
(Also i'm not happy that lrm manage to hit me even i'f i'm going full speed - thats just stupid imo)

[Ovion]

All heads / cockpits have the same set armour value - 15 internal structure points plus 0-18 points of armour.
Same as all mechs have a set minimum 10 heat sinks.
That's just how it is.

It's like, why does an Assault Mech with 100+ points of armour in places still only have 15+18pts of armour in the head.
Honestly, I think it should scale.
Cockpit have a set crit value of 15hp, then the armour / head internal points scales to the weight.
This wouldn't increase armour elsewhere for the locust, but it'd help Assaults a little.

Also moaning that LRMs going at 160m/s (576km/h) can catch your mech going at most 48m/s (173km/h) is a bit ludicrous.
(And missiles irl go even faster than this, with sub-sonic munitions going around 800km/h and super-sonic going over 1225km/h.)

Edited by Ovion, 14 September 2014 - 12:49 PM.

[Bilaz]

Ovion, on 14 September 2014 - 12:35 PM, said:

All heads / cockpits have the same set armour value - 15 internal structure points plus 0-18 points of armour.
Same as all mechs have a set minimum 10 heat sinks.
That's just how it is.

It's like, why does an Assault Mech with 100+ points of armour in places still only have 15+18pts of armour in the head.
Honestly, I think it should scale.
Cockpit have a set crit value of 15hp, then the armour / head internal points scales to the weight.
This wouldn't increase armour elsewhere for the locust, but it'd help Assaults a little.

Also moaning that LRMs going at 160m/s (576km/h) can catch your mech going at most 48m/s (173km/h) is a bit ludicrous.
(And missiles irl go even faster than this, with sub-sonic munitions going around 800km/h and super-sonic going over 1225km/h.)

It doesn't have to be so. i mean 10 heatsinks - i get it - all reactors are more or less the same. But armor values are already quite different from tabletop values and its obvious that locust cockpit is actually quite small (which is already a penalty of sort - losing up to 30% of visual space on a very fast mech) - so it would be nice to get it's hitbox bigger so it actually gets hits with anything other than missiles (so that armor helps somehow - now i run with 1 and have not noticed any difference) or better yet transfer some of that armor in other places.

How they work has little to do with real missiles, but even they have different % to hit for targets with different profile and speed - for instance some infamous 2.8mach anti-air missile (system) on top of 2mach target speed limit have 80-90% to hit interceptor target, 30-60% to hit helicopter and 20-50% to hit cruise missile (note that both helicopters and (some) cruise missiles fly less than 1 mach - yet...).

But I'm looking at it from ingame balance point of view - different classes supposed to have different roles and all that - yet in open space any mech gets hit by lrms (small sometimes not so much - yet they have less armor) - when it would make more sense for lrms to be usefull againts big-slow moving mechs and useless against small-fast moving ones - so lrm-only or lrm-heavy teams would have hard time dealing with one and easy time dealing with other. I'm only a player, so i may be wrong - but still i think thats how it should work. (Not that its uplayable or unenjoyable as it is)

[Ovion]

Actually, armour values mostly match tabletop.
All variants have stock times two.

Large hulking mechs are significantly more at risk from light mechs (on their own - you're meant to work as a group to counter that).

A LOT of my kills in Locusts have been lone, or pairs of Assault / Heavy mechs, that just can't cope with the speed as you figure eight them to death. (Or in some absolutely hilarious cases, stand touching them, under their weapons arc and shoot them in the chest till they die).

It's also why you use cover, and don't stand still or move in a predictable pattern.

Yes, if you stand in / move through an open field, expect to get hit - and not just by LRMs, Lasers, PPCs, Autocannons and Gauss will all reach out and touch you in the open.
LRMs however will at least warn you about it first, at that point you can make a hard left or head to cover.

It's why people who complain about LRMs confuse and irritate - because LRMs are not that easy to use. They're also easy to avoid, with several hard counters available that no other weapon system has to deal with.
_{Well, this turned into an I'm-tired induced rant of a personal peeve, so I'll whack it in a spoiler to save guys from it and add a TL;DR at the bottom.}

Spoiler

As counters, you've got local ECM, AMS, Radar Deprivation, and the incoming-target Warning.
Then running LRMs you have to deal with that, plus cover from above and around your target, needing a lock, needing to hold a lock, judging where the target will go and if there's sufficient cover nearby and if enemy ECM is nearby, you can't get any locks at all anyway.
If you can't see your target, you need to rely on your team to get them, or to have counter-counter measures in the form of TAG, NARC or UAVs.
Alternatively you need to bring it yourself, which means exposing yourself to the enemy team.
On top of that, you need to know the maps height and overhang so you can figure out if your missiles will hit the target, or waste a volley in a 'rangefinding' exercise.

Any other weapon it's a case of 'see target, place reticule over target, fire', in some cases you need to lead or track the target, but the only 'counter' to your direct-fire weapons, is them hiding behind something.

Additionally, LRMs are significantly heavier than other weapon systems for damage per ton.
LRMs hit with an average of around 30%, (40% with Artemis) (Based on my own stats and those of others I've discussed this with).
That means per ton (180 LRMs), 54 to 72 will hit for a total of 60-80 damage per ton of ammo.
This is spread across your target rather than focused though, so only 1/3 to 2/3 will hit a 'vital' part, meaning you're only really doing 20 to 50 damage to a focused section per ton.
This means an average 1-2T of ammo to kill a Locust and 3-8T to kill an Atlas/Direwolf.

Autocannons on the other hand have an average accuracy of roughly 60% and a rough average of roughly 150 damage per ton, meaning an average of 90 per ton, focused on a single location.
This means an average 0.3-0.5T of ammo to kill a Locust and 1.5-2T to kill an Atlas/Direwolf.

Throw in that on average you only need around 3T of ammo per an Autocannon for a match (for roughly 9, 11, 15 or 17 tons total) while LRMS ideally need roughly 6-8+ tons per launcher for the same damage output (for 8-10, 7-9, 12-14, 16-18 or more tons total).
Being you generally run weapons like these in pairs, you're looking at roughly 18-34 tons, vs 16-36 tons minimum.

And honestly, that's just averages - for my Catapult to be effective with 2 LRM20s it needs at least 10 tons of ammo, plus BAP.
That's 31.5T for one weapon system, with 2 ML for backup.
There's been games where I can't do much of anything due to heavy enemy ECM cover, and only having 2 medium lasers to play with.

My Jagermech boasts 2 LBX10s, with 7 tons of ammo plus 2 ML lasers and is far easier to use with a higher average damage.
I haven't had a game where I wasn't useful, bar that odd game I bought it in the first exchange.

It's also why you don't really see LRMs in 'high level' games.

TL;DR - This means that non-LRMs are lighter, self-reliant, easier to use and focus the damage better.
While LRMs are heavier, often team-reliant, requiring you to get and hold locks and have hard counters.

[Mothykins]

Ok, real talk here. Medium Pulse or Small Pulse and BAP on a 1V? (With range and re-fire mods)

[Bigbacon]

Cavale, on 16 September 2014 - 09:58 AM, said:

Ok, real talk here. Medium Pulse or Small Pulse and BAP on a 1V? (With range and re-fire mods)

i would rather the MPL over BAP.

1V needs all the fire power it can get...though i ran mine with a LL and 2MGs i think OR just a single LPL

Edited by Bigbacon, 17 September 2014 - 10:35 AM.

[IraqiWalker]

Cavale, on 16 September 2014 - 09:58 AM, said:

Ok, real talk here. Medium Pulse or Small Pulse and BAP on a 1V? (With range and re-fire mods)

You don't need the BAP, unless you're personally taking on the ECM mechs.

[Mothykins]

IraqiWalker, on 17 September 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

You don't need the BAP, unless you're personally taking on the ECM mechs.

That's what I figured. Sorta sad when A scouting and Recon mech can't make use of scouting and Recon Equipment...

[IraqiWalker]

Cavale, on 17 September 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:

That's what I figured. Sorta sad when A scouting and Recon mech can't make use of scouting and Recon Equipment...

Technically you can use it for scouting. However, it only increases your range up to 1000 Meters, if you want it installed. I'd recommend getting the advanced sensor module in there as well. So you can really spot from long range.

[Mothykins]

IraqiWalker, on 17 September 2014 - 02:01 PM, said:

Technically you can use it for scouting. However, it only increases your range up to 1000 Meters, if you want it installed. I'd recommend getting the advanced sensor module in there as well. So you can really spot from long range.

Was what I was doing.

upon actually swapping though, it seems damage is the same because of recycle time. Might try mods..?