Take a minute to watch the medium dev breakdown movie again as it focuses on the Hunchback. Firing the AC 20 once brings your heat up to 20% and firing all 3 lasers brings your heat up to 35% total. That being said look at the differences in damage (based on the table top numbers). The autocannon 20 is 20 damage per shot, 7 heat and has 5 shots per ton of ammunition. You get 2 medium lasers which are listed as 3 heat 5 damage (note that lasers have infinite ammunition) and one small laser which is 1 heat and 3 damage. It is important to note as well that medium lasers (and the autocannon) have a range of 0 to 9 but the small laser has a range of 0 to 3 meaning it is probably only useful at very close range. If I recall each number distance reflects 30m which would suggest that small lasers no longer deal damage past 100m but that is just theory talk. Let's remind ourselves that in the video the autocannon's heat is more than all of the lasers so they are tweaking things. As one last note the videos show that all armor values have been doubled; the more than doubling of the AC 20's heat value may indicate that weapons with limited ammunition are doing double damage (and double heat). The cycle time on the Autocannon 20 is five seconds by the way so if you don't bring extra ammunition you could be out of ammo for your best weapon in under a minute!
To be perfectly honest the first thing I would do with the Hunchback is ditch the small laser and pack extra AC 20 ammunition. That will only lower lower your damage to 30 and give you enough shots to actually use the AC 20 for a while. That would give you 15 shots with the AC instead of 10 and should help you run a little cooler. I noticed immediately how hot the hunchback runs in the medium dev breakdown video. In case you are wondering the Hunchback seems to have 13 heatsinks by default.
Another variant that might be interesting is to go with 4 small lasers, the AC 20 and extra AC 20 ammunition. Each arm apparently has 3 laser hardpoints and the right torso has 3 ballistic hardpoints. You could do something crazy like 6 flamers and 3 machine guns (with lots of extra ammunition) although your weapons would all be base 3 range so I hope you're using the extra light engine with some speed modifications!
Wouldn't it be a lot smarter as a hunchback to go after Founders catapults instead of Mr. Atlas?
Granted the catapult is faster than you and has jumpjets but you've got a lot of armor and an AC 20 that would really like to say hello! You would have the firepower advantage in the hunchback with 33 damage per solvo vs his 20 damage per solvo.
Another option would be to stay in escort range of a friendly Atlas (something like a 100m circle perimiter). You would keep him safe from would be scout assassins and he'll keep you safe from just about everything.
Another option would be to escort your catapult. Assuming the Atlas was leading the charge with the hunchback/catapult in tow you could stay about 200m between your two friends. Whichever one needs you the most gets your full attention.
One problem I see a lot of people do in WoT is play a medium like a heavy tank (because that's all they are used to playing). The short version is that it fails miserably. Get creative and I think you'll find an amazing setup for your Hunchback that works for you!
Edited by Glythe, 02 July 2012 - 07:58 AM.