19 replies to this topic

[UnsafePilot]

I've been pretty heavy mech exclusive since starting on MWO and have finally decided to go down the light mech path.

I've been having a crazy amount of fun in the SDR-5K( C ) starter; high speed llas sniping for the first half of the game and then swooping in to 4xmachine gun people down near the end of the match. So my first thought was to go the spider route; own and elite my own sdr-5k with the same build and enjoy the greatness.

But then I look at the FS9 and I start to wonder if I'll feel like a fool a few weeks from now when I get bored with llas sniping and want to change my loadout?

So here's my new thought: FS9-S as a 5K( C ) rippoff:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...5b90738548942bc

I'd be giving up the machine gun range and the harder to hit spider body but picking up a second ams, the possibility of forcing overheats on my opponents and the ability to laser boat out when I get bored of the single llas.

What say you forums?

[o0Marduk0o]

In which way is this a 5K rip-off without a single machine gun?

Your build overheats quite fast and does little damage.

[Amsro]

Spiders and Firestarters are both great. I have both and use both differently.

Spiders 5K/5V can go 170 kph, the 5D can go 150kph and has ECM.

Firestarters are epic light energy boats, can go 150kph.

The Flamers aren't great still, you can make them work sometimes.

Edit; your build has WAAAAY too little armor for the ember, those legs alone will be match sticks. Even at a full 32 points of leg you can't be careless in your travels.

Edited by Amsro, 20 February 2014 - 07:45 AM.

[UnsafePilot]

o0Marduk0o, on 20 February 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

In which way is this a 5K rip-off without a single machine gun?

Your build overheats quite fast and does little damage.

My thought was that it would rip-off the game plan of llas sniping the first half of the match and crit killing during the end. Don't flamers do the internal crit bonus thing? How would you build a FS9 to hit that playstyle?

I'd rather not have to work through both chassis if I can get multiple playstyles out of the FS9.

Edited by UnsafePilot, 20 February 2014 - 07:51 AM.

[UnsafePilot]

o0Marduk0o, on 20 February 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

Your build overheats quite fast and does little damage.

This part has got me thinking.

I'm showing the SDR-5K( C ) at: 9.40 firepower, 6.12 dps and 100% cooling. My FS9-S build sits at 11.80 firepower, 4.92 dps and 100% cooling. Little higher alpha, little lower dps and both show 100% cooling. Is Smurfy's not accurate on flamer heat?

[UnsafePilot]

Amsro, on 20 February 2014 - 07:41 AM, said:

Edit; your build has WAAAAY too little armor for the ember, those legs alone will be match sticks. Even at a full 32 points of leg you can't be careless in your travels.

Is it 'safe' to go lower on the head? Where else should I shave armor off in order to beef the legs?

It's a whole new way of thinking for me; In my heavies I get cored so often that I've almost forgotten legging is a thing.

Edited by UnsafePilot, 20 February 2014 - 08:10 AM.

[o0Marduk0o]

UnsafePilot, on 20 February 2014 - 08:04 AM, said:

This part has got me thinking.

I'm showing the SDR-5K( C ) at: 9.40 firepower, 6.12 dps and 100% cooling. My FS9-S build sits at 11.80 firepower, 4.92 dps and 100% cooling. Little higher alpha, little lower dps and both show 100% cooling. Is Smurfy's not accurate on flamer heat?

Click on the "Weaponlab" button on top of the loadout page to see details on heat and weapon range/dmg. The % value is as accurate as the value in the ingame mechlab. It is because how flamers work, you hold the trigger and it burns but there are no "single shots". So the calculation is a bit messed up.

UnsafePilot, on 20 February 2014 - 07:47 AM, said:

My thought was that it would rip-off the game plan of llas sniping the first half of the match and crit killing during the end. Don't flamers do the internal crit bonus thing? How would you build a FS9 to hit that playstyle?

I'd rather not have to work through both chassis if I can get multiple playstyles out of the FS9.

The flamers crit but you can't hold the crosshair on a target for long time to crit something because you overheat yourself. MG DPS is much better and zero heat. The FS9 K(?) variant with ballistic hardpoints is what you want to rebuild a better spider 5K.
5-6 ML, 2 MG works quite well. Or the Ember if you want to spend money.

[UnsafePilot]

o0Marduk0o, on 20 February 2014 - 09:37 AM, said:

Click on the "Weaponlab" button on top of the loadout page to see details on heat and weapon range/dmg. The % value is as accurate as the value in the ingame mechlab. It is because how flamers work, you hold the trigger and it burns but there are no "single shots". So the calculation is a bit messed up.

Well damn. That makes perfect sense even if it didn't occur to me earlier.

Quote

The flamers crit but you can't hold the crosshair on a target for long time to crit something because you overheat yourself. MG DPS is much better and zero heat. The FS9 K(?) variant with ballistic hardpoints is what you want to rebuild a better spider 5K.
5-6 ML, 2 MG works quite well. Or the Ember if you want to spend money.

It looks like it's the FS9-H that has the two balistic points. Do you think that crit seeking with a pair of machine guns would still be worth something or is the SDR-5K( C ) magic reliant on having all four?

I imagine I'll play around with load outs a good bit once i've settled on a variant to keep, which is my main reason in wanting to do a FS9 over a SDR

[Voivode]

1 or 2 flamers is all you want or need. Boating more will cause you to overheat rather than your target.

The unique effect of the flamer is that for the first roughly 3 seconds you gain no heat, then the heat builds slowly at first and the rate of heat accumulation is an exponential curve. You can circumvent any heat buildup by chain firing two flamers as neither one will ever pass the 3 second continuous fire threshold for heat generation.

4 flamers will rapidly gain heat and deal little in the way of damage. The full effects of the flamer (heat buildup on enemy and "blinding") are best achieved with 1 or 2.

For a true Spider 5-K(c) ripoff, check out the Ember. 4x energy, 4xballistic. Only available for MC however.

Edited by Voivode, 20 February 2014 - 11:58 AM.

[o0Marduk0o]

UnsafePilot, on 20 February 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

It looks like it's the FS9-H that has the two balistic points. Do you think that crit seeking with a pair of machine guns would still be worth something or is the SDR-5K( C ) magic reliant on having all four?

With MG's you have to target the enemy mech for longer time compared with medium lasers to do the same dmg and their range is lower. I'd say you can crit components in a location or you destroy the whole location, the result is quite the same. FS9-H has higher damage while the SDR-5K has longer range with the LLas. You can slot a LLas too in a FS9 but that would be a waste of hardpoints, for SDR-5K it is the only useful option.

[ShinVector]

Voivode, on 20 February 2014 - 11:57 AM, said:

1 or 2 flamers is all you want or need. Boating more will cause you to overheat rather than your target.

The unique effect of the flamer is that for the first roughly 3 seconds you gain no heat, then the heat builds slowly at first and the rate of heat accumulation is an exponential curve. You can circumvent any heat buildup by chain firing two flamers as neither one will ever pass the 3 second continuous fire threshold for heat generation.

4 flamers will rapidly gain heat and deal little in the way of damage. The full effects of the flamer (heat buildup on enemy and "blinding") are best achieved with 1 or 2.

For a true Spider 5-K© ripoff, check out the Ember. 4x energy, 4xballistic. Only available for MC however.

Hmmmmm... 3 seconds ?? Really.. Need to experiment on this... the FS has more energy than I know what to do with.
And since they fixed the multi weapon group firing in the last last patch.. Hmm hmm !!
Always wanted to use flamers to blind people causing them additional grief.

[Zordicron]

Maybe this was mentioned elsewhere, but part of the spider MG madness is they are arm mounted and it makes it stupid easy to point them where you want them while juking all over the place and flying overheads.

[Remarius]

Eldagore, on 20 February 2014 - 07:47 PM, said:

Maybe this was mentioned elsewhere, but part of the spider MG madness is they are arm mounted and it makes it stupid easy to point them where you want them while juking all over the place and flying overheads.

True but its really not a problem using the MG's on the Ember to crit. I have a number of 6 kill battles in mine and am constantly taking out weapon arms or legs. The ability to do a 4 medium laser panel damage AND exploit it is huge.

Personally my time piloting the firestarters till mastered has made me paranoid about facing them. But then I loved the aerial abilities of the spiders too.

[UnsafePilot]

Thank you all for taking the time to help me get my fs9 thoughts straightened out. A few other things I've learned from hands on experience are that I should have bought an xl engine before the first firestarter, its very easy to be in the way of larger mechs if you're not paying enough attention and that I'm still not sure how to do anything useful with flamers.

[NRP]

As far as Firestarters go, the Ember is much closer to the Spider 5K (it's actually better imo).

The Spider is more durable however. I'm still amazed at the amount of abuse a Spider can take. When you drive a Spider, you will always be the last one standing. That's why I think a Spider is perhaps the best mech you can drive when solo PUGing. No matter how horribly bad the match goes, you will still live long enough to earn some money.

Edited by NRP, 26 February 2014 - 08:51 AM.

[UnsafePilot]

NRP, on 26 February 2014 - 08:48 AM, said:

As far as Firestarters go, the Ember is much closer to the Spider 5K (it's actually better imo).

The Spider is more durable however. I'm still amazed at the amount of abuse a Spider can take. When you drive a Spider, you will always be the last one standing. That's why I think a Spider is perhaps the best mech you can drive when solo PUGing. No matter how horribly bad the match goes, you will still live long enough to earn some money.

Yeah I'm really leaning towards the ember being the first mech I spend $$s on .

I really thought I'd hate being easier to hit than the spider but so far I've had pretty good luck with the FS9's being able to absorb some of those extra hits without losing functionality.

Edited by UnsafePilot, 26 February 2014 - 09:07 AM.

[HlynkaCG]

I decided to rip off the SDR-5K © for my 9S build as well but I went with 4 small lasers in place of the flamers.

Friendly neighborhood firestarter

An alternate build might swap the JumpJets for additional AMS ammo or heat-sinks.

ETA:
In terms of damage I haven't don't really noticed much of a difference between 2 MGs and 4, personally the 9H is my overall favorite FS variant. I get more use out of the 2 torso energy hardpoints than I do out of the Ember's 2 extra ballistics.

Edited by HlynkaCG, 26 February 2014 - 09:10 AM.

[UnsafePilot]

It surprises me given how much I wanted a llas build starting out, but I've really warmed-up (haha, SHS pun...so glad that phase of eliting is over) to quad mlas's +whatever you'd like being the main weapon system.

[Bront]

The H is a better 5K ripoff if you're not going to do the Ember. 2 MGs, 3 SL, ERLL, XL295 Endo, 224 points of armor, and JJ/HS to taste.

[UnsafePilot]

Gave up entirely on the LLAS idea and have pretty much settled on this:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...cabdf39f5206337

Still tweaking the armor a little but I think that it's mostly there.