12 replies to this topic

[GrizzlyViking]

As one of the people who purchased the Pretty Baby when it first arrived in MWO I do not find it to be comparable to standard Awesomes such as the 9M and the 8Q. Pretty Baby is presently hamstrung by a few things. (1) One of its 3 energy hard-points is in the head limiting it to only a small/medium energy weapon. (2) The two missile hard-points on the left arm have only 4 missile tubes each. (3) -33.3% deceleration rate makes it hard to stop and hard to maneuver (4) Huge left an right torso hit boxes, which combined with the -33.3 deceleration rate make it a huge easy target.

As it stands now if you use an XL in Pretty Baby you free up tonnage, but lose space for weapons and heat sinks and Pretty Baby DPS drops to less than most mediums. Most mediums are 25% FASTER at minimum, deal more DPS, and are much harder to hit. If you use the XL 400, you are super fast with an ability to carry less fire power than most mediums and you are a huge target easily blasted by enemy fire. Pretty Baby makes a terrible brawler fast or slow due to the massive side torsos and limited weapons options. Additionally, the decreased ability to stop the Pretty Baby makes it very difficult to avoid enemy fire into the huge side torsos.

With a standard engine Pretty Baby avoids torso kills, but is slow and still unable to stop in reasonable amounts of time resulting in quick loss of weapons from ranged enemy fire. Makin it useless in ranged battles as well. The best thing that Pretty Baby does right now is provide enemies with more kills. How about a little Pretty Baby love PGI?

Finally, I believe these disparities could be rectified by making some changes. I want to be clear that am not saying that all of these should be implemented. I am merely sharing some ideas that may help bring Pretty Baby in line with other non-hero Awesomes.

(1) Move the energy hard-point that is in the head to an arm or torso location. (2) Move one of the arm located missile hard-points to the right torso with the other missile hard-point (3) Eliminate the -33.3 deceleration rate completely (4) Tweak the right and left torso hit boxes to make Pretty Baby as durable as other Assault class Mechs.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 30 July 2014 - 04:04 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Prettybaby made a Prettydecent Thug though.

[SgtMagor]

with the new quirks, armor buff the Pretty Baby turns out to be a good mech. 8Q and 9M might be better but heh Danielle Peterson thought it was a good ride

[GrizzlyViking]

SgtMagor, on 30 July 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

with the new quirks, armor buff the Pretty Baby turns out to be a good mech. 8Q and 9M might be better but heh Danielle Peterson thought it was a good ride

I wrote this after playing with the "new quirks." heheheheh I'm not seeing it. Maybe the build you have is something I need to try. What is your loadout?

[Hans Von Lohman]

I would wait until the Awesome gets customizable weapons so you can get bigger missile launchers on the left arm.

However, the fact is that the Pretty Baby is more about missiles than energy weapons, and the new quirks are geared more toward helping energy boating on the Awesomes.

Even before these bonuses for the Awesome the Pretty Baby was always considered sub-par for a hero mech.

[Lightfoot]

The true load-out of the Pretty Baby is not known from what I have read. So PGI's version is considered to be apocryphal.

I say the Pretty Baby deviates too much from other Awesomes to be correct or canon. Awesomes are either heavy missile with large bays and some Energy or heavy Energy with some missile bays. Pretty Baby is minor Energy and minor Missile, so it doesn't fit the canon for the Awesome.

On top of it all PGI retracted the Pretty Baby's unnatural agility when they removed it's ability to stop/slow down normally. You can't turn on a dime if you can't slow the mech down.

Not wanting to change too much on an all ready released mech I would say give it one more large energy slot since this is the signature ability of the Awesome line.

[Sandpit]

Awesomes were always one of my favorite mechs in Btech.

I haven't owned one since CB. There's a reason for that

They definitely need some love but what would really fix the Awesome is to have ALL of the mechs in the game rescaled and hitboxes refined a bit more.

That broad chest is just way too easy to pick apart. Narrowing the side torso hit boxes into arms and then expanding them slightly into CT to spread that across all 3 torsos would help a lot.

[cranect]

Actually I have been running my awesome a lot since the patch. They work a lot better. Mine all have PPCs of some sort because they need it to be an awesome imo. I have only had a few games with less than 250 damage and most were up at 400+. What they have received before now is good enough and if you torso twist correctly you can keep your torsos until the end of the match. Also with ppcs and some luck you can dish out as much damage to a dire wolf as they do to you, or at least close enough that they rethink the idea.

[Tahribator]

The hitbox pass pretty much made XLs unusable on the 9M. PB is even more shafted because it's attractiveness lies in its ability to mount XL400 and hit almost 90 KPH. Currently XL's on Awesomes are a suicide if you're not running one of those ridiculous LRM builds.

Not to mention its hardpoints are a mess, even the 8V is a much more flexible and attractive alternative.

Edited by Tahribator, 31 July 2014 - 12:04 AM.

[Budor]

I like mine for lerms. Always worked well.

[SgtMagor]

PB-stock weapons, AMS(1.5tons ammo)

[Lefteye Falconeer]

I agree 100%. I loved the Pretty Baby because of its aesthetics and cause I love Awesome and was thrilled at the idea of an agile Assault.

If only I had known about the brakes nerf! No matter how supposedly agile you are, when you can't brake inthis game you are dead. There is simply no way for you to get back into cover in a decent time so when your Pretty Baby is out, it stays out. And that usually means death. Sure, I am very happy about the new quirks. Except they don't mean much for the Pretty Baby cause:

- with only 2 real Energy hardpoints the best you can do is mount two PPCs, which are not that much, or two ER PPCs, which are still quite unmanageable. The spare medium in the head is... meh.

- Being a 'mech that has to use an XL engine to make the best out of its agility, the buff to the CT armor doesn't help that much. Sure it's not bad, but doesn't improve its survivability much.

And with all that said, the problem as pointed out in the previous posts, is that the Pretty Baby is just a bad Awesome. Compared to the other ones its hardpoint layout is just a disaster, and the brakes nerf completelynegate the agility advantages.

I know they won't fix it, but I'll always take a chance to repeat how bad of a Hero 'mech the Pretty Baby is.
And this is coming from an Awesome and Pretty Baby lover. I stick to it because I am insane and I like challenges, but every time I drop with it in the solo queue I know I am hurting my team by taking an Assault slot that could be better used by pretty much any other assault. Including some other Awesomes.

[GrizzlyViking]

cranect, on 31 July 2014 - 12:01 AM, said:

Actually I have been running my awesome a lot since the patch. They work a lot better. Mine all have PPCs of some sort because they need it to be an awesome imo. I have only had a few games with less than 250 damage and most were up at 400+. What they have received before now is good enough and if you torso twist correctly you can keep your torsos until the end of the match. Also with ppcs and some luck you can dish out as much damage to a dire wolf as they do to you, or at least close enough that they rethink the idea.

I can try torso twisting more, but I don't think it will work for the Pretty Baby like it does for the regular variants for a couple of reasons. One is that the -33.3% deceleration lowers Pretty Baby's reaction time to enemy fire considerably, thereby leaving it exposed to enemy LOS for much longer than non-hero Awesomes. Second is that Pretty Baby's energy hard-point locations limit it to only 2 PPCs. The third energy point in the head has only one slot available, which limits it to only a flamer, a med. laser/pulse laser, or a tag.

As an assault mech the Awesome should be able to deal assault level damage, but the Pretty Baby's hard-point and missile tube restrictions limit max damage to that of a medium/heavy class mech, not an assault. If the Pretty Baby were able to deal above average damage, then the -33.3% deceleration rate would make sense. As it stands, I still think that sub par weapons load-out options and -33.3% deceleration rate make Pretty Baby less than Awesome.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 31 July 2014 - 02:54 PM.