65 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

Bad Idea #1: Lowering leg armor by more than a few points.
Bad Idea #2: Putting ammo in the legs, as it is used last and will transfer explosion into the side torso directly.
Bad Idea #3: Mixing Bad Idea #1 and #2.

This is actually kind of shocking; many builds provided to help new players have this glaring failure in them from even experienced pilots.

You folks really need to stop doing this, and stop recommending it. It's a horrible idea. When I go pugging I kill so many people through leg shots ; the second I realize their leg armor is bad it's like blood in the water, followed generally by ammo explosions.

You are not protecting your side torso by jamming it in the leg. If your leg ammo is hit, it will transfer to the internal parts of the side torso and heavily damage it, plus even if you survive, you will be legged and that is generally borrowed time anyway.

It is a lose-lose scenario.

So seriously folks - start armoring your legs. A couple points here and there can be fine, but that's it. And stop stuffing them full of explosive ammo, in particular when that armor isn't max!

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Met the same STK pilot three matches in a row the other night with papier mâché for leg armour. Swept him twice, with the other being a hilariously catastrophic ammo explosion. I think I got 5 component destructions.

I will sometimes put ammo in my legs, but never without at least enough armour to withstand 30- and 40-point alphas. No point risking it otherwise.

[Koniving]

I remember when Victor was religious about putting ammo in the legs. ...Then something happened. Something glorious.

I also remember being called some bad things when I stopped doing bad idea #1 long ago and began working designs that do not put ammo in the legs; long before anyone else did. Welcome to Koniving's world; glad people are catching up.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Depends on the mech and personal experience. I like to be mostly armored, but I will shave some off of legs and arms and the head. When I die, I usually have legs and arms left, even with reduced armor. Mechs with JJ require more in the legs, and lights simply cannot live without max armor in the legs. I very rarely loose all the armor to my head.

[Kiiyor]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 03:37 PM, said:

Bad Idea #1: Lowering leg armor by more than a few points.
Bad Idea #2: Putting ammo in the legs, as it is used last and will transfer explosion into the side torso directly.
Bad Idea #3: Mixing Bad Idea #1 and #2.
...

Though I aware of my own shortcomings in doing this, I will belligerently continue to do so... because the mental image of the ammunition belt path winding a merry little path through a few dozen meters of mech leg to get to weapons on the arms that are as far removed from their ammunition storage as geographically possible AMUSES ME GREATLY.

Also hills are OP, and i'm a dirty, behind-a-hill-advanced-zoom-lurking coward.

[Victor Morson]

Koniving, on 10 February 2014 - 03:59 PM, said:

I remember when Victor was religious about putting ammo in the legs. ...Then something happened. Something glorious.

I also remember being called some bad things when I stopped doing bad idea #1 long ago and began working designs that do not put ammo in the legs; long before anyone else did. Welcome to Koniving's world; glad people are catching up.

Crit chances changed and so did some things with the damage transfer and ammo usage pattern, as well as people more and more catching on to "Hey, those legs are probably filled with explosives and aren't armored very well."

So basically the game has changed.

It was still never a good idea to lower your leg armor much, though!

Kiiyor, on 10 February 2014 - 04:01 PM, said:

Also hills are OP, and i'm a dirty, behind-a-hill-advanced-zoom-lurking coward.

Ironically the 'mech that can do this the best is the Gauss Jager, which actually has nothing to fear from ammo in the legs because Gauss rounds don't explode.

EDIT for new newbies reading this: In fact I highly endorse stuffing Gauss rounds into your leg, that's entirely safe. It's the only ammo type that is.

Edited by Victor Morson, 10 February 2014 - 04:04 PM.

[Corison]

Lowering your leg armor a bit is not a bad thing unless you find your getting legged frequently.

If you find you get legged? Bump up the armor. Never getting legged? Go a ahead and lower it. In theory you should be able to balance your armor so you lose at least 2 if not 3 locations before going down. I tend to balance mine with the left/right torso. I would much rather have someone aiming at my legs while everyone else is going for the CT. There are no weapons in the leg after all and you need to lose both to be toast.

As for the ammo.... Yes putting ammo in a un-armored leg is bad... but some things like limited AMS ammo should be gone LONG before your leg armor is ever in trouble.


IMO the #1 bad idea? Not having 1 ton free for TAG! The best free exp in the game.

Edited by Corison, 10 February 2014 - 04:04 PM.

[Fang01]

I learned the hard way on ammo in legs. Never again

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 04:03 PM, said:

Crit chances changed and so did some things with the damage transfer and ammo usage pattern, as well as people more and more catching on to "Hey, those legs are probably filled with explosives and aren't armored very well."

So basically the game has changed.

It was still never a good idea to lower your leg armor much, though!



Ironically the 'mech that can do this the best is the Gauss Jager, which actually has nothing to fear from ammo in the legs because Gauss rounds don't explode.

EDIT for new newbies reading this: In fact I highly endorse stuffing Gauss rounds into your leg, that's entirely safe. It's the only ammo type that is.

Truth if I see twin gauss im going hard shoulder

[Koniving]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 04:02 PM, said:

So basically the game has changed.

It was still never a good idea to lower your leg armor much, though!

Not so sure on the game change; crit chances went up for the games guns that you preach to people to never use (LB-10x, MG) but the others have largely remained the same. Information on them just got pumped out a bit and if I recall they said those triple damage chance numbers went down. The thing is people are more accurate now with armlock toggle and HSR and the removal of delayed converge (all 3 add to the pinpoint aim issue). Okay; yeah the game changed.

But damage transfer has always been the same. Ammo explodes, it goes through your body at a cut rate of 50% damage after the limb is blown; but there's a roll to try and detonate all ammo in said limb when the limb itself goes. Most people could not or did not carry enough ammo for that to matter as it was usually gone. I suppose now we do have so much ammo and greater ammo dependence (more people using it; every build revolves around it). I think in part the players themselves changed with ballistics being the fastest killing weapons to exist in MWO.

Ammo in the legs is the last to be spent.

But indeed, never, ever a good idea to lower leg armor.

(On the what changed; I bet someone got your leg. )

Edit: ("Games"? Wtf? Meant guns; weapons.)

Khajja nar Jatargk, on 10 February 2014 - 04:05 PM, said:

Truth if I see twin gauss im going hard shoulder

If you saw two; hard shoulder. What if you see three?

Edited by Koniving, 10 February 2014 - 04:17 PM.

[luxebo]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 03:37 PM, said:

Bad Idea #1: Lowering leg armor by more than a few points.
Bad Idea #2: Putting ammo in the legs, as it is used last and will transfer explosion into the side torso directly.
Bad Idea #3: Mixing Bad Idea #1 and #2.

This is important on all mechs, but I've seen it on lights. That is the worst idea, lowering armor and adding ammo, as everyone aims for the legs of a light (except maybe slow mechs.) Good advice Victor.

[Arnold J Rimmer]

luxebo, on 10 February 2014 - 04:13 PM, said:

This is important on all mechs, but I've seen it on lights.

Nothing more satisfying than grazing the leg of a Spider with a laser and watching the armour turn red. Then it's almost worth squirrelling after.

[xMEPHISTOx]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 03:37 PM, said:

Bad Idea #1: Lowering leg armor by more than a few points.
Bad Idea #2: Putting ammo in the legs, as it is used last and will transfer explosion into the side torso directly.
Bad Idea #3: Mixing Bad Idea #1 and #2.

This is actually kind of shocking; many builds provided to help new players have this glaring failure in them from even experienced pilots.

You folks really need to stop doing this, and stop recommending it. It's a horrible idea. When I go pugging I kill so many people through leg shots ; the second I realize their leg armor is bad it's like blood in the water, followed generally by ammo explosions.

You are not protecting your side torso by jamming it in the leg. If your leg ammo is hit, it will transfer to the internal parts of the side torso and heavily damage it, plus even if you survive, you will be legged and that is generally borrowed time anyway.

It is a lose-lose scenario.

So seriously folks - start armoring your legs. A couple points here and there can be fine, but that's it. And stop stuffing them full of explosive ammo, in particular when that armor isn't max!

Indeed...for new players these are bad ideas, and I think some experienced players post their builds when not taking into consideration the adverse effects it could have on a newer player.
For the experienced player it is not so detrimental to lower leg armor/store ammo depending on the mech and space available on said mech which may require some sacrifices in armo/ammo placement, but that's the difference in being experienced vs. being new I suppose.

[LauLiao]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 03:37 PM, said:

Bad Idea #2: Putting ammo in the legs, as it is used last and will transfer explosion into the side torso directly.

So where SHOULD I put ammo to mitigate the problems you point out? Shall I put in in the arms? The damage still transfers directly to the side torso, just like from the legs, plus, unless you're in a light or fast medium, your arms are MUCH More likely to be hit (players don't generally aim for the legs on heavies and assaults). I've lost an arm or two in maybe (just a wild guess) somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of my games. I think I can count the number of games I've been legged in on one hand.
And sure the ammo explosion in the leg will slow you down but if I'm in my slug of an Atlas, is it really THAT much speed I'm losing?
Also, if I put ammo ONLY in my legs, it might get used last, but it also gets used first too.

All that being said, yes, I've run across a few heavies/assaults (usually Jaggers I wanna say) that have such thin armor that I was able to bore through to the ammo in a couple of laser blasts to set it off, and yes, that's a terrible idea to strip out that much leg armor, but it's just a bad idea in it's own right and not really that much to do with the ammo.

Edited by LauLiao, 10 February 2014 - 04:36 PM.

[Victor Morson]

LauLiao, on 10 February 2014 - 04:34 PM, said:

So where SHOULD I put ammo to mitigate the problems you point out?

On a standard, try to put it in the same torso side as the guns it feeds and CASE it in.

On an XL build, it's best to space the ammo out so that it will get used up from key areas first. The head is a great place to store a ton as it will be the first to get used, and rarely gets damaged initially; the side / center torsos will generally have enough armor to hold up while you are burning the ammo. Usually a single ton of ammunition - in particular if it's partially burnt - won't outright kill you even if it detonates on your XL. So spacing it out helps a ton.

[Barkem Squirrel]

I think it was June of last year when I started to just do leg checks with the ravens. The one that really re-enforced that was a Jagger. He was firing, while I came at him from the side and alpha into his leg. Now with a Raven 4X that is not much, 2 MPL's, SRM 6, and 2x MG's. I took most of his armor off. Then keep firing, and boom leg gone. That is when he decided to look at me, but I was moving by then. As I am running I see a message, I killed him. So I circled back due to two jaggers being there. Guess who was my second victim.

I am running with the Locust now, so other than Sarah's Jenner I have not been running that much in lights. I am still finding Cataphracts with very little leg armor where 5 SPL's are legging them in three alphas, so armor less than 40. In the Jaggers, I aim for the legs just to see if I can pop them, especially on Catapults sitting and scanning.I had a match maybe two weeks ago now where a LRM Raven 4X was scanning an area and did not see me, and I fired a stream at his leg and got component destroyed. Then the AC 2 spider poped up on an other hill and boom goes a leg. Now another mech jumps up where the raven was and I target its leg and boom again no leg. So within 2.5 minutes I have three legged mechs running around by the cave entrance. So what am I to do, but call the two jenners to clean up. It's a team game isn't it?

One thing to remember, some builds there is no room left in the torso, so people do place ammo in the legs and arms.

Edited by Barkem Squirrel, 10 February 2014 - 04:43 PM.

[Daggett]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 03:37 PM, said:

Bad Idea #1: Lowering leg armor by more than a few points.
Bad Idea #2: Putting ammo in the legs, as it is used last and will transfer explosion into the side torso directly.
Bad Idea #3: Mixing Bad Idea #1 and #2.

While generally correct, there are exceptions.
For instance when driving my Jager with 4xAC5 i have no worries putting my ammo into my legs and lowering their armor to 41 pts. That's because i fully utilize the high-mounted guns and their range. My legs are almost always hidden behind some sort of cover so my torsos are usually gone way before my legs are even hurt. And should something sneak up to me, 40pts can still withstand some fire. In most games i guess i could even get away with only 30pts on my legs should i dare to do so.

Generally i always start a new build with about 40pts of leg-armor and then play several games and watch my legs. Are they getting shredded or heavily damaged too often i simply increase their armor. The same is true for head armor (except on vulnerable mechs like catapults of cause) if i need some more pounds to get another full ton to play with.

I like this approach more than going into battle overarmored while missing a ton or so for additional stuff which could increase my efficiency.

In the end it's all about probabilities given your chassis and playstyle and maybe elo-bracket. For example, when deciding between an extra ton of armor on my decently-armored legs (where 40 is decent) and an additional medium laser, the laser would almost always win just because the number of fights where i lose my legs are way less than the number of fights i win with the help of that extra weapon. Too much armor (like the full 84 pts on an atlas leg) does nothing, it's often just extra weight carried for some quite rare cases.

The trick is to find this thin line of how low one can go with his armor without rising the odds of a leg-sweeper to unhealthy amounts.

Edited by Daggett, 10 February 2014 - 04:49 PM.

[White Bear 84]

Vote #1 Ammo in the cockpit! First used (I believe) & least hit part of the mech.

Generally speaking on a number of my mechs I drop leg armor by a max of 5 points depending on the build. This is usually enough to squeeze on an extra heatsink or tonne of ammo.. ..any more and you exponentially start asking for trouble. Most of my fast movers have max ammo as you depend on your legs to get you out of trouble!!

As for ammo, I think this depends on build. If you run an XL then ammo in the RT/LT is suicide as the chance of a crit increases chance you will die. No, I do not use case; in most cases the ammo ends up in this order - 1st in the cockpit, 2nd in an empty arm or the CT, 3rd legs, 4th RT/LT.

p.s. So I dont use case.. ..dont judge me, its a personal choice, live on the wild side!!

[Victor Morson]

White Bear 84, on 10 February 2014 - 04:51 PM, said:

Vote #1 Ammo in the cockpit! First used (I believe) & least hit part of the mech.

Yep. Contrary to instinct, head ammo = the safest ammo.

[Acierocolotl]

I have occasionally put ammo in the legs, there just wasn't room anywhere else. Of course I'm driving lights, and after endo, ferro fibrous and double heat sinks I just don't have room anywhere else other than a tonne in the head. But of course my legs have max armour, because of course everybody shoots there. I might be an idiot, but I'm not dumb.

But I also thought that if I got legged despite all that, I was as good as dead anyway, my lifespan drops to seconds when I'm gimpy. So I don't care if I go up in a glorious cloud.

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Victor Morson, on 10 February 2014 - 04:53 PM, said:

Yep. Contrary to instinct, head ammo = the safest ammo.

Nothing says 'safe' to me quite like sitting on a thousand kilos of cordite and depleted uranium AP shells.