bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
1) Would Artemis make a big difference for this loadout (4xLRM10s) in term of damage output?
Generally speaking, no. Artemis tightens your missile grouping and improves their turn rate, which is largely only useful for hitting very fast or very small targets- Lights and Cicadas. Those are enemies you should leave to people who have pulse lasers and other high-damage quick-fire weapons.
bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
2) Would Tag make any difference for me, considering Im not the fastest mech around and I don't really want to expose myself if not necessary?
It would because getting your own target locks is very useful to improving yourself in the game with LRM use. However, the BLR-1S does not have the energy hardpoints to spare. What you've constructed is not really a missile
boat, because those four medium lasers are actually pretty significant secondary weaponry. Removing one of those lasers, particularly given that the chassis is quirked for them (although less so than other BLRs) is not recommendable.
bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
3) Any way to improve this build in your opinion? IE, I'm still unsure if I should stack all ammos on one side of the torso, or if its better to leave them as is, kind of padded on both side.
Consider reducing your ammo load a little bit in favor of heat sinks. I can't imagine you get close to running out of ammo that often, and four non-5 LRM racks triggers ghost heat with consistent fire. You don't really need 2k+ missiles, particularly given you're an assault 'mech and therefore part of your role is to be durable. Yes, even with an XL engine. I'd say dropping two-three tonnes of ammo for more heat sinks would be a good idea. You should also consider shunting some ammo out to the arms, since Battlemaster arms rarely take much fire. Finally, I would be
extremely leery of keeping the legs underarmored while simultaneously stocking ammunition in them. Do one or the other of those two things, but not both.
bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
4) Case is of no use AT ALL with an XL engine setup like mine right?
Correct. CASE prevents the ammo explosion from continuing beyond the component with CASE installed, but it does not save that location- so any ammo explosion WILL still lose you a vital component and thus your engine (or head, on the off chance that actually happens).
bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
5) Does firing all 4 LRM10 at the same time make the missiles more "loose" and dispersed (kind of like an LRM20), meaning less of them will hit the target, or do they just stack in the same "space" since they are LRM10s?
Kind of both of these. The missile cluster will wind up bloated by the number of missiles you have firing, but the fact that they're all 10-racks means they'll cluster relatively tightly anyways. Imagine each 10-spread to have its own circle. When you fire them individually, these circles eventually take the same route. Fired as a group, they overlap mostly, but can't perfectly overlap at any point. It's not going to cause you serious problems unless you're, for some reason, trying to hail LRMs down on a Light 'mech.
bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
6) Also, can the 1S be run successfully with SRMs? Any common builds?
Looking for any insights.
Absolutely! My own 1S uses two LRM-15s in the arms and a pair of 6s in the left shoulder, like so:
BLR-1S Warlord . I find this thing an absolute blast to run- I huck missiles at long range until I run out of ammo, then I'm still fast and stompity to run in and bludgeon stripped things to death. Tonnes of fun.
bruceisnice, on 13 March 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:
And also suggestions for another mech that could LRM in a comparable way in the heavy category (Catapult I guess?). What I like about the BLR-1S is I can charge in to close a game for my team at the end.
The Catapult unfortunately only ever has six hardpoints. You wind up having to choose between only missiles (terrible, since they're all arm-mounted and those rabbit ears are easy to clip), two missile and four energy (less missiley by far) and four missile and two energy (and since the energy are center torso, options there are limited).
The closest you're likely to get in the heavy class is the -V or -VA Orions, which have three and four missile hardpoints respectively and a mixture of energy and ballistic hardpoints as well that you can use to bulk out your damage potential. You can also sort of improvise a bit with the Jagermech-A, but other than that you just aren't going to have enough missile hardpoints at the same time as a decent number of other hardpoints in a weight class below Assault. You can
almost do something similar with the Kintaro, but that's a Medium and thus a near-completely different beast altogether.
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