6 replies to this topic

[Xoco]

1) Can you shutdown the mech to avoid incoming missiles? I saw some guy in a vid keeps shutting down his mech when there was incoming missiles, and he never got hit (not sure if he's behind a ledge, or the missile simply lose track when engine is off, or I'm just plain wrong).

2) I really like the little machineguns. They sound awesome, and the particle effects looks way cool. But they seem to do pretty low damage (I was in the trial mech with 4 MG and 3 other laser-based light mechs, ganging up on 2 Heavies. By the end of it, I expended half of my machinegun ammo--most of my shots, bar latency, connected, since I was just running around taking pot shots while those two guys try to fend off the other light mechs). Can you win games with just these MGs? I feel like they simply won't have enough damage to take down the enemies when push comes to shove.

3) Is there any light mechs that can use ER-PPC? What's the difference between ER and normal PPC if I plan on mainly sniping?

[Danghen Woolf]

1) Yes and no. LRMs track to the last position it lost the lock. If you can move then shutdown it is possible to drop the lock and avoid some damage.

2) Machine guns do little individual damage, they are used for crit chasing when an enemy has no armor. They have a higher chance to do damage to components.

3) Yes, several light mech mechs can fit an ER PPC/PPC the Spider, Jenner, Adder, and Kit Fox. ER PPC does not have a minimum range where the PPC has a minimum range of 90 meters where it will not do any damage.

[Xoco]

Ah, I see. So if I may noobishly ask one more question--how does armor work in this game? It seems like these things would be very transparent if you come from the tabletop game, but they weren't explained in any of the tutorials.

[Kiiyor]

Danghen Woolf, on 08 November 2014 - 06:51 PM, said:

1) Yes and no. LRMs track to the last position it lost the lock. If you can move then shutdown it is possible to drop the lock and avoid some damage.

2) Machine guns do little individual damage, they are used for crit chasing when an enemy has no armor. They have a higher chance to do damage to components.

3) Yes, several light mech mechs can fit an ER PPC/PPC the Spider, Jenner, Adder, and Kit Fox. ER PPC does not have a minimum range where the PPC has a minimum range of 90 meters where it will not do any damage.

Also, the Cicada is a light-medium that has AMAZING perks for ERPPC's. You should check it out.

[Tarogato]

For further clarity:

1: I would strongly advise against dodging LRMs with a shutdown. Unless you know how to do it, you'll just park yourself under the LRM stream and eat every missile ... the trick is to know whether or not you can break lock and shutdown in two different places at once.

2: By "crit chasing" and "components" we're talking about individual weapons, ammo slots, and heatsinks,. Machine guns are useless against armour - don't bother firing them until you see an exposed section with no armour (unless you just want to cause a fuss and distraction - just being simply annoying to a crucial enemy can be very beneficial in the right situation)

3: ER-PPC is also significantly hotter. It's a trade off - do you want to run cooler but have zero damage at close range, or do you want to be able to fire point blank as well as snipe long range but suffer the higher heat?

Armour: each section of your mech can only take a certain amount of armour. For the torsos, it's one number of amour shared between front and back, so you can decide the distribution how you like it. Most mechs put very minimal armour in the rear so it's also good to take a shot in their back if you can get a few. Once the armour on a section is gone, any components nestled in there are vulnerable to crits (machine guns excel at this), meaning if there is an AC/20 in an Atlas's right torso, you have a chance of wiping it out before the entire torso is blown off. It's a way of saving shots - if you can crit weapons and ammo, you can disarm a mech without having to spend all the time stripping the actual body parts off. However, with the way the game is balanced right now, this is kinda moot. TTK is too d**n low, so parts just blow off instantly nowadays.

(psst, PGI, multiply our armour again... )

[Danghen Woolf]

Xoco, on 08 November 2014 - 07:28 PM, said:

Ah, I see. So if I may noobishly ask one more question--how does armor work in this game? It seems like these things would be very transparent if you come from the tabletop game, but they weren't explained in any of the tutorials.

Armor works in the same way as in TT, the difference lies in that there is no Bell curve or random hit locations. The armor values are double what they are in TT. One difference you will noting is that each item/component has individual hit points before it is destroyed. Unlike TT where a single critical hit will disable a weapon, double heat sink, or equipment, MW:O requires a certain amount of damage. I am not sure of the exact numbers but there are several pages in the New Player Help section that should have some of the answers. Machine guns and LBX autocannons have bonuses to critical chances.

[Saketai]

Not much to add. Each section of a mech has its own armor, and once that's gone, the parts inside are vulnerable to damage. As you've already heard, MGs are only useful once the armor's already gone.

As for PPCs, keep in mind that as a lighter mech, you'll usually be faster than what you're shooting at. That means that you shouldn't have trouble keeping outside of 90m, and also that you can quickly get closer if you're out of range.

The ER PPC does go farther, but the projectile speed is about the same, i.e. not that fast, so it'd still be hard to hit things that are outside of standard PPC range.

(If you get jumped by a short-range light, you're screwed anyways: ER PPCs put out a full 50% more heat, so you'll probably be exploded long before you can fire enough shots to disable the other mech.)