26 replies to this topic

[Luke McGuire]

Ok so I've been playing a while and I have played all the previous Mechwarrior games so I have at least a decent understanding of how the game is played.

I have a huge problem on my Cataphract at the moment.
In the past 5 battles, I've been toast literally as soon as I so much as looked at an enemy mech.
I'm talking 1 vs 1, light, medium, heavy or assault doesn't seem to matter. I get hit 5 times MAX and my centre torso goes up in smoke with barely any damage anywhere else.
The mech is fully upgraded with Endo and FF and all armour slots are maxed. There is no ammo in the centre torso and all the ammo I'm carrying is in C.A.S.E.
How can this be? Perfect aim?
It just feels wrong and several people have commented that my mech seems to be "made of paper". Previously the mech has been able to take an absolute hammering and still been standing when facing several other mechs at the same time.
Now, like I say, it's 5 hits, at most (I'm not even exaggerating since I checked the stats at death), inside a few seconds and I'm gone.

Cheers for reading and responses.

[Hans Von Lohman]

When you start getting hit, turn.

It sounds ridiculously simple, but one of the first things you learn is that just keeping your crosshairs on your enemy that is shooting you just means they only hit one body location, minimizing how much armor you use as defense.

Spreading damage around your mech so that you lose all of it when being hit is far better than just losing the CT armor and dying.

[Luke McGuire]

That makes sense. I do try to do that, but obviously it doesn't always work out. It just felt really wrong the speed I died in those particular matches. Normally I can take plenty of damage but these times, the damage report after death showed like no damage to my mech apart from a giant black hole in the centre of it. The fact it happened in 5 matches in a row was what made it feel really strange. However, the matches I played since posting have been much better and I have only died to my own stupidty during most of those.

[Edustaja]

What were the weapons you were hit with?
If it just says AC/20 or Gauss rifle, then it probably was a dual Gauss or AC/20 Jager that shot you twice.

[Amsro]

If one mech is shooting you and you die quick, then likely there were 3-4 mechs looking at you, lances tend to be somewhat together.

Edited by Amsro, 24 March 2014 - 04:36 PM.

[Szegedin]

Luke McGuire, on 24 March 2014 - 04:26 PM, said:

That makes sense. I do try to do that, but obviously it doesn't always work out. It just felt really wrong the speed I died in those particular matches. Normally I can take plenty of damage but these times, the damage report after death showed like no damage to my mech apart from a giant black hole in the centre of it. The fact it happened in 5 matches in a row was what made it feel really strange. However, the matches I played since posting have been much better and I have only died to my own stupidty during most of those.

Well, sounds like you hit a string of bad luck where you were getting immediately focused down by multiple players with optimized weapon mixes that took out your CT...an Assault will melt under those circumstances and you're not even an Assault.

What kind of weapons are you carrying? Some loads will make you into a priority target...

Edited by Szegedin, 24 March 2014 - 04:38 PM.

[Redshift2k5]

Most of my mechs, 5 hits is going to be at least 100 damage. If I only shoot you with half my weapons. My Orion P, fires an AC10, a PPC, and two large lasers. That's 38 damage at moderate range. If you let me shoot you five times, that's 190 damage, enough to kill you and one of your friends.

Five hits from just about any mech is going to kill you. Five hits is a lot. Luckily most mechs can't fire all their guns five times in quick succession, but the real key is to not let yourself get hit hat much, and not let it all get sunk into your CT. Move with your team (so you are not a single target facing multiple enemies), don't be the first mech around that corner until you have the confidence to back it up, torso twist, and play smart.

[Silentium]

I got knifed in the phract a few times myself, I think the broad front profile works against it some, especially if you are new or unused to heavier mechs. Twisting is a must, along with a good sense of cool down. You could try practicing the turn-shoot-turn move in the training grounds. Another thing I have noticed is that I almost never see a phract coming head on, it is almost always pop tarting or flanking.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Turn into hits with your big arms and large side torsos.

Time turning back toward your foe with the cooldowns on your own weapons.

Push more armor to your front (I typically keep maybe 16 or 18 on larger mechs for the rear CT).

[Kubernetes]

Could be a combination of bad luck and rising in ELO to a point that you're running into a lot more people who can aim. Also, people start to recognize that mechs like Jagers, Phracts, and K2s are high priority targets. You've just got to adapt and be more careful about when and how you expose yourself.

[Flyby215]

Hey OP, when you say that you're looking at your mech with a big black hole in the CT without damage around it tells me that you probably aren't moving a lot. "Speed is life, you go slow, you die" -Sgt Unther.

Also, how much armour to you carry on your front and your back? I usually carry only about 10 points on my backside, the rest maxed out up front.

There are some very dedicated players in Mechwarrior, some of whom are very, very sharp-shooters. Watching some Twitch steams you can see players running Jenners at full speed and keeping their lasers trained on a single component of a moving enemy. It's quite impressive, and all the more reason to stay with a group and to twist your torso a lot to try to deflect oncoming fire to less critical parts of your mech.

It comes with practice, of course. It also helps to watch others play when you die, or watch live streams on Twitch, or Youtube. Once you see what other players do, copy their tactics/strategy/play, it really helps.

[XX Sulla XX]

Sounds to me like your ELO is moving up and your fighting better pilots that can aim better. Lower / average ELO players will tend to spread damage all around your mech. Better players will all tend to concentrate on the same areas and tend to hit it most times.

Also if you are in a Cataphract I assume you are in a high DPS build So probably you got used to just stairing at other mechs and holding the trigger. That works less and less well as you play better pilots.

[Sug]

No one has asked but if you're running an XL engine you're going to be pretty fragile. Losing any torso will kill you.

[Orion2011]

Check your mechs armor. And balance the front/back armor to your need/playstyle. When I was a noob I ran around the battlefield in the buff for a long time before I figured that out.

A lot of the stock mech configs have a lot of WTF going on...

[DONTOR]

You mentioned you have CASE for your ammo. If you also have an XL engine CASE does nothing to protect you from dying in that situation. CASE only contains the explosion to the side torsos, thus it really only works with standard engine equipped mechs.

Alot of the time you will want to put ammo in your head first, then your legs, it is safest there as those spots are usually alot less targeted.

Edited by DONTOR, 25 March 2014 - 07:09 AM.

[Luke McGuire]

First of all, thanks for all the advice. It's going to be very useful I'm sure.
I'm using a Muromets so yes the engine is an XL and I think that is my main problem.
As for armour I am maxxed on all sections so I can't really improve in that respect.
I think generally I need to practice turning my torso to take hits. I can do this reasonably well already but since using the Cataphract, I am conscious of losing the arms because that's the majority of my firepower for the loadout I'm using on that chassis.
I was testing a ballistic only loadout and rocking 3 UAC-5's. Now, whilst it performs well at any range for me and I've got plenty of ammo, the mech as a whole just wasn't cutting it yesterday whereas other days it was doing great. I think a combination of bad luck and better pilots was what got me in the end. After I posted the original post I played a few more rounds and was doing much better.

As a side note, the weapons I was getting hit by were mostly lasers. No gauss and the only ballistic was an AC-10. There wasn't even time for anyone to hit me with LRM's or anything. I'm talking the first casualty of the match and a pristine chassis to a black CT in no more than a few seconds (If you sit and count to 3 right now, that is literally how long it took... emerge from cover, 1, 2, 3, I'm dead) And the number of mechs I came up against was 1 or 2 in front at most. And the rest of the mech had literally brand spanking new armour intact all over every section, so that I literally had a hole burned through the centre and that was the only damage I'd apparently taken.
In a couple of the fights I definitely did just try to overpower them by heading straight at them whilst they did the same to me. I just thought I could take it from what my HUD was telling me about their loadout but apparently I couldn't and they COULD take what I was dishing out.

Also, I don't stop moving unless I'm in cover so it's not like I was standing still or anything.

Anyway, I think the XL engine is the main issue since I didn't actually realise that there was the issue of them killing you once they get through your torso. I may switch it out and have a rethink about how my strategy works.

Thanks again.

Edited by Luke McGuire, 25 March 2014 - 10:59 AM.

[Sug]

Also, don't feel like you can only put ammo in the head/legs/CT. If you need more ammo put it in.

The chance of dying from an ammo explosion is like 1-2% and that's before you consider that most weapons would have to crit an ammo slot multiple times (unlikely) to destroy it.

There's also conflicting reports of what CASE actually does. If you have the 0.5 to spare, sure add some CASE, but I wouldn't go out of my way to spare weight for it.

Edited by Sug, 25 March 2014 - 11:28 AM.

[Luke McGuire]

Yeah I put the C.A.S.E in because I had the space spare. It's only really a fun / test loadout to see what it would be like. It sounds awesome, looks awesome and can really strip a mech down quickly not to mention blind them with the constant explosions as the round hit. It has plenty of ammo when for when it stays alive but it just wasn't lasting like I remember the chassis doing a while back. Maybe I got lucky because it does have a large sort of broad front that is easy to hit but my previous loadouts on a basic Cataphract chassis seemed much sturdier. When I have the money to really play around with it I'm going to alter the loadout and take out the XL engine and see if that's part or most of the issue.

[RavensScar]

Luke McGuire, on 25 March 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

As for armour I am maxxed on all sections so I can't really improve in that respect.
[snip...]

Apologies if you're already aware of this, but just to make sure - the CT (and STs) have a maximum number of armour points that can be split between front an rear hit boxes. How have you split your armour? You generally only need 18 points on the rear hitbox at the absolute maximum - on my Orions, I only run 12.

Luke McGuire, on 25 March 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

As a side note, the weapons I was getting hit by were mostly lasers. No gauss and the only ballistic was an AC-10.

It's worth bearing in mind that the post-death screen doesn't tell you how many of each weapon you were being hit with. If it just says 'Medium Laser' there's a very good chance that it actually means 30 points of damage from something firing 6 of them at you!

[Morashtak]

The next to last option is to strip the mech down to nothing - no weapons, no armor, no engine. Empty shell.

Save the mech and quit out.

Reload the game and rebuild the mech.

If you are doing all the previous suggestions in order to protect yourself and are still dying to the first shot to your CT then it might be a bug and a ticket is your very last option.

There have been the very rare, almost unique, cases where a component shows installed but isn't. Hopefully this is not a new bug that only appears on a certain mech with a unique loadout with a set amount of CT armor. Easy to duplicate but not easy to fix.