24 replies to this topic

[DONTOR]

My 5 x ASRM6 stalker makes non brawler assults panic, and wriggle like a worm its wonderful.

[Straylight]

It depends on what I'm piloting.

My Spider fears nothing, because fear is antithetical to the showboating, crowd-pleasing Spider piloting experience. Also because it's tiny and impossible to hit.

My Raven is given pause by AC40s and streak boats, with legs vulnerable to the former and no defense against the latter.

My Jenner (D) is most vulnerable to other fast lights with more medium lasers than I have, but is agile enough to not really care much about anything else.

My Cicada is an odd duck. I've found it performs best when I'm toeing the line between caution and aggression, so it is without the stand-off capability of my Centurion and the daring-do of my Lights. Generally it's skittish about anything that's too slow to hit my Lights and short-to-medium range, including light ACs and PPCs.

My Centurion is just agile enough to fare well in long-range fights and just fast enough to evade close-range bruisers, so medium lasers and machine guns on fast platforms are what I concentrate most on avoiding.

My Cataphract, thanks to its broad-side-of-a-barn forward target profile and throttle response from a 1980s turbo car (floor it! ...nothing ...nothing ...nothing booooooOOOOST!), fares poorly against LRMs and snipers. However, its own weapon load makes it good at forcing opposing snipers to keep their heads down in turn, so it's only when I get ambushed that it's a problem. Interestingly, I find the wide, low-slung arms make it fare better in close COD fights than you'd expect a 'mech equipped for long-range sniping to be.


As far as what I see cause reactions in my targets:

Lasers give no hit indication from behind. Bug? Probably, but consequently, I've killed many Trial Stalkers who had no idea I was even shooting at them until they exploded.

My Cent's single AC/2 invokes one of two reactions: either people immediately panic and back off, or they ignore it completely. Both are good: those that immediately duck have stopped shooting back, and those that ignore it lose limbs quickly enough.

My Cataphract's triple AC/2 does not get ignored. Mostly it seems to confuse people, either because I'm perfectly happy opening up on them from 2 kilometers away, or because I'm equally happy charging straight into knife-fighting range with them.

People are learning to react to the TAGs on my Spider and Raven again, but for now it's still more "duck!" than "kill da wabbit the spotter!"

Most people still don't notice my Raven's Narc launcher, but anyone who does is immediately oblivious to anything else and wants to kill me at any cost. I'm okay with this, because it's very easy to lead them into ambushes.

Finally, ERPPCs from strange angles have amusing effects of people, particularly if they're getting hit from a direction they think they're protected from. DDC pilots are always the funniest, because they don't care about the damage, but constantly switching their ECM off really annoys them.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

all weapons can freak your opponent out, it just depends on if your using them right.

[Ken Burkhart]

I actually talked about this somewhat in a post a while back about my Jenner Loadout(common as it is). For more than one reason, though I have 6 hardpoints for energy, I do my best matches in just using a couple of ER large lasers, as opposed to the classic 6Meds, or 6 SmlPulses, or whatever combination of meds and smalls.

I think a lot of it is that I am fast as hell so I can choose the distance of engagement. I don't have to close to full damage range of those AC20s, or closer than max range of SSRMs(which are still light killers when boated). The heat management is great too for the most part.

The other factor, important to this topic is that when you see blue lasers fly by, you tend to look, at least more often than if you see green lasers. If my point is distraction, as in getting that trial stalker(or similar LERM BOAT) to turn around and/or stop shooting, it is easier to do with blue lasers as opposed to green. I think the reasoning is simply because they are bigger weapons, which while technically aren't the highest alpha possible on a Jenner-F, since they don't know it is a Jenner-F, they may think it is a bigger threat. And if I sneak around, I can pull them from the fight. And yet, the alpha is still 18, which is plenty if you get a mech with low armor. So it gets the best of both worlds.

Believe it or not, I think one factor that scares people are still the ERPPCs. It isn't only the weapon itself, but the fact that if you see one on an ECM spider, you hesitate before you chase it down. In fact, I'm saving up C-Bills to get one fit out for me.

[Rhent]

Chain firing 3 AC/5's does a wonder job at shake.