16 replies to this topic

[ackstorm]

note: This is kind of a rambling post so sorry if its messy.

I'm more of an altruistic player who wants the *team* to succeed and win, as opposed to my own personal glory. As such, my ideas on weapon usage are not the popular 'meta' builds which are mostly built around personal glory.

If I can keep the enemy pinned while my team flanks, or I can strip the armor off an enemy target so that when my team mates get close they go down faster, those are wins to me - getting the kill means nothing to me. I want the team to succeed, even if I die trying.

This game is all about weapon combinations and using them effectively. Effective use of multiple weapon types is a skill that will make you more effective on the battlefield, especially if your goal is to be effective no matter what situation you are put in.

LRMS - Great indirect support weapon. Both strips armor all over the body and has a great
suppression effect to keep your Target busy trying to hide. Don't boat it. I do LRM40 at the max and I only bring 4 tons of ammo, as this is not my only weapon and it should never be the only weapon you carry.

SRMS - Great at stripping armor and dealing damage, and if chain-fired can be quite effective at suppressing (and hitting) fast mechs. Great at short range but dont boat it - use them as a compliment to your other weapons.

SSRMS - I have found these are most effective as secondary/backup weapons that allow you to focus on your main weapons without losing focus. They go great as backup weapons if you have a PPC or Gauss rifle and need to fend off lights. They are also the only thing in *MWO* that seems to be truly effective at hitting fast moving Targets. Doesnt hurt to have a couple of these (and a bap) for close encounters. I would not suggest more than 2 SSRM6's at most on a clan mech, This is not a weapon of pinpoint accuracy and trying to do battle with it as a major part of your arsenal is highly inefficient.

Autocannons - This breaks down into two types:

1. Long-range/rapid-fire auto-cannons like the AC2 - AC5: Great direct support weapon. Though more a direct-fire weapon their capacity to suppress the enemy and strip armor is the key. IS has a harder time with it because the weapons fire slower, the suppression effect on Clan equipment is much better.

2. Short-range/slow-fire auto-cannons like the AC20, AC10 cannot do the suppression effect, but they are very effective at exposing (and exploiting) weak spots in enemy armor. If the enemy is not smart about turning their body to take it in the shoulder they wont last long.

Lasers - Effective direct damage weapons, no ammo dependencies but as you take damage you lose heat-sinks which can make it harder to use them effectively in the bitter end. This weapon has no suppression capabilities and the enemy will have little or no trouble targeting you if this is all you are firing at them. It is important to have a heat-neutral weapon of some kind to switch to when you need to cool down. This is where suppression weapons come in handy. If you are good with suppressive, you can keep the enemy too busy to fire back until your heat is cool and its time to resume killing then.

By themselves any of these weapons *can* be quite powerful, but also very limited in flexibility. I see lots of people do it none the less in hopes of high damage, but I feel they do little to help their team other than steal kills/damage.

Carrying some LRM's, even a small amount, allows you to keep the enemy's head down so that you can fire your lasers without as much risk of return fire. But this is not its best purpose, as what it often does it corral the enemy into cover or strip the armor off of people who are unable to adapt in time. Many people do not even carry AMS, which is sad considering the 1-ton it would take to carry AMS + 1000 ammo if most of the team took a single AMS, they would be well protected from this.

Carrying a long range autocannon is even more effective at long range suppression, as there is no delay that the enemy can use to shoot/hide/shoot/hide to get past the lrms. If they poke out to fire at you, they get a face full of dakka (even if its just AC2's or UAC5) which makes it hard to aim and hard to shoot without losing critical armor.

I don't carry all long or all short range weapons. I almost always have my weapons configured with overlapping ranges so that I can keep leveraging multiple weapons as the range changes.

Despite how I mix my weapons up, I rarely use more than 4 buttons. Usually left and right click are for left and right arms (so I can fire around corners) and my two thumb buttons for chest-mounted weapons.

Edited by ackstorm, 29 December 2015 - 10:43 AM.

[Leone]

Flamers - Effective lockdown weapons for hot builds. Chain fired two pairs of flamers will be heat neutral most maps, and fired all in a go help heat up thine enemy even faster. Flamers are great suppresion and lockdown weapons, designed primarily to go after those energy heavy builds, though ac20s hafta be wary around em as well.

They truely are sacrificing personal glory to assist the team.

~Leone.

[Spetulhu]

Leone, on 29 December 2015 - 11:28 AM, said:

They truely are sacrificing personal glory to assist the team.

Investing the tonnage in an Active Probe or an ECM suite is a boon for the team too. ECM is very good to have, preventing target locks and thus missiles needing a lock-on. And the probe can break enemy ECM bubbles when you're stuck in brawling, meaning you can at least get LRM support from the team.

[Rogue Jedi]

other team support tactics include:

scouting ^{(something like a SDR-5V with high speed and lots of jumpjets, to get into good positions to spot without taking return fire, or the RVN-3L with ECM and NARC)}

if you are a fast Mech take a UAV and if you find a large group of enemy use it ^{(this also works as a distress signal for larger Mechs)}

try something like the "umbrella" Kit Fox, take the -C Right Arm with the ECM and 3 AMS and at least 2 tons of ammo ^{(possibly also the AMS range and overload modules)}, then use the remaining tonnage for whatever weapons you want, if you have the AMS modules you should be able to take out 20+ missiles per volley, just stick with the big guys and they will protect you while you make it almost impossible for LRMs to hurt them.

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 29 December 2015 - 01:49 PM.

[ackstorm]

Spetulhu, on 29 December 2015 - 01:03 PM, said:

Investing the tonnage in an Active Probe or an ECM suite is a boon for the team too. ECM is very good to have, preventing target locks and thus missiles needing a lock-on. And the probe can break enemy ECM bubbles when you're stuck in brawling, meaning you can at least get LRM support from the team.

Same with learning to use NARC and Tag, you can change the entire outcome of the round. If not from the LRMs from the sensor information you are providing to track target movements.

(ok credit to Rogue Jedi for already mentioning this)

Edited by ackstorm, 29 December 2015 - 03:20 PM.

[Galenit]

Rogue Jedi, on 29 December 2015 - 01:48 PM, said:

try something like the "umbrella" Kit Fox, take the -C Right Arm with the ECM and 3 AMS and at least 2 tons of ammo ^{(possibly also the AMS range and overload modules)}, then use the remaining tonnage for whatever weapons you want, if you have the AMS modules you should be able to take out 20+ missiles per volley, just stick with the big guys and they will protect you while you make it almost impossible for LRMs to hurt them.

ecm, 3x ams, 3,5 tons ams ammo (if you use both ams modules and the matches are lrm heavy), 2 mls, 1 lrm 10 and some ammo. You will stay with the big boys, if you poke its likely that your right arm is removed, the 3 ams stick out and give a great target. And i dont want to speak about the low hanging lasers on your left and right side. With the lrm you can do something and not only beeing a umbrella, but dont miss to use your lasers in the right moments, only both weapons together will give you some damage in the end. If you have the money, take one omnipart with jumpjets (just one!) it gives you a lot more movement options. Best position is in fornt of your allys but behind some cover, this will kill the most missiles and thats why you should take a lrm to do some damage, in the right position, you cant use your lasers that often.

About NARC:
Its best used without using other weapons (take other weapons! You need them, but in the right moment. When lrms hit them they are distracted and you can do damage.) if you take it with a light mech and, if you take care they wont know where the narc is comming from. Too bad it gives no assist and only a reward if the enemy is killed by lrms, most times the lrms open them, but lasers or ballistics kill them. If you need a better matchscore or money use narc together with other weapons.
And dont waste all narcs too far away. Marking an enemy is great, but doing it within lrm rage is much better.

About Utility:
If you use a mech over 50 tons, you should try to pack a bap/cap or ams, if you use a mech over 70 tons, you should try to pack both but at least take one of it.

Edited by Galenit, 29 December 2015 - 08:00 PM.

[Nik Reaper]

The best help a team can get is an accurate gunner with a powerful loadout that will drop enemies before they have time to kill any of your allies.

But short of that, as stated up ECM or BAP ( if ecm is not available ) are always good to have , and as for weapons , the keeping pinned strategy can work sometimes , so far best options I have seen so far are several clan LRM 5's , about 4 chain fired will keep an enemy shaking and keep his cockpit bright with explosions if he is facing your way , and UAC2's can be used for this too. Keep in mind that those kind of builds are dps builds and need a lot of face time to be effective so if anyone is as much as looking your way never forget to keep moving or get cover whan the amount of fire coming your way is too much.

I guess something like this could work http://mwo.smurfy-ne...6b1b0f8d4797960 , the beauty of clrms is that even though the damage under 180m is very low the screen shake is still there.

[Rogue Jedi]

Nik Reaper, on 30 December 2015 - 12:20 PM, said:

so far best options I have seen so far are several clan LRM 5's , about 4 chain fired will keep an enemy shaking and keep his cockpit bright with explosions if he is facing your way ,

5 LRM5 with cooldown modules or 6 without, chainfired, will fire a constant stream until you ether overheat or run out of ammo.

The target will hate you and unlike most other LRM builds that build kills Mechs especially if you have Artemus and use your own locks and TAG, as the majority of missiles will hit Center Torso of your target.

that build is a skirmisher not fire support so you want to be on or near the front line to use it to its full potential

[Leone]

Artemis is kinda a waste of tonnage for lrm 5s. They're already fairly pinpoint as is. This has been, an Opinion, by Leone.

~Leone.

[Rogue Jedi]

Leone, on 31 December 2015 - 01:44 AM, said:

Artemis is kinda a waste of tonnage for lrm 5s. They're already fairly pinpoint as is. This has been, an Opinion, by Leone.

~Leone.

I used to think that myself until I tried a Summoner with 5 LRM5, then 5 ALRM5, there was a significant improvement.

I am certainly not saying you are wrong, for something like this an opinion is almost never wrong, I am just justifying mine

[Nik Reaper]

Though the main point was that there is little effect to being overly supporty in the current state of the game.

Let's look at a hypothetical situation:

You are a light/medium or a light heavy ( 60t ) , and you are along side an assault or a big heavy , you are alone a bit far from the rest of the team ( not being in a death ball is a problem by it's self but mby you are going to protect that base that seems to be getting caped ) and you come across an enemy assault mech , seemingly by it's self.
Now, what are the things the friendly assault will appreciate you doing:
1) ECM support, sure the enemy mech will not get a red triangle to fire from range, and he might be looking else ware and not paying attention while not getting target info in case you or your assault is damaged somewhere so he will default to firing to the CT or a known weak point and will not get help from an missile boat.
As we can see ECM is still kinda great.
2) Narc/TAG , you might have one or both of those , and by using them correctly your big guy can get target information faster, a better missile lock and with a narc he will track the enemy even behind cover.
Oki , kinda useful but in a greater number of situations he could do just as well without those unless he is an LRM specialist in witch case he will love you ( a fun thing to do in a coordinated premade group ), but all in all rarely truly worth the equipment weight and hardpoint.
3) BAP , sure you get to acquire target from a bit more far away and get target info faster, could be useful hard to say for sure , better used for the anti-ecm property , in case the enemy mech is an ECM Atlas DDC , if your friend has lock on weapons like streak SRMs or LRMs you could close in on the enemy and cancel he's ECM bubble.
Again highly situational but if you really have 2 slots and 1.5t with witch you can't do anything else ( it happens to some IS mechs that have a low engine cap and endo and fero or a lot of ammo might not have 3 slots left for an extra DHS and a ton extra , you think you have enough ammo so you strip 0.5t from somewhere and put on a bap, happened to me.. ) but it's not a go-to.
4) Rapidfire weapons , when paired with a real damage dealer mech , a mech using those can be effective in interesting ways as AC2/UAC2 , MGs and a flamer can really do psychological pressure to a lest than great pilot, the enemy might start to torso twist and badly time the moment to face your force while you are doing somewhat low damage but are applying pressure and giving your friend time to cool while waiting for the enemy to face him again, also a single flamer , MGs and ac2s are a great distraction when fired up close at the enemy cockpit , it is not needed to deal head damage , but the light effect that all those weapons do will greatly impede the enemies ability to fire back with any accuracy.
So those weapons can have a good use , even as they rarely get to do any significant damage by them self, but it's never a good idea to only have them as a main damage source.

And 5) the best thing your assault friend will appreciate you having is damage and good aim , as faster the enemy falls down the faster he stops shooting back, the main reason that any 2 smaller mechs are better than 1 big one is the heat capacity and heat dissipation nature of true double heatsinks in the engine ( of 250 and up rated engines ), so while 1 assault has 10 internal true DHS and let's say 10 externals 1.5 ones putting him at 3.5 heat dissipation per second 2 mechs that have, say, 10 internal and 4 external DHS will have 2.6 x 2 = 5.2 joint heat dissipation while having as much or more weapons between the 2.

So while there are things that you can do not centering around damage to help a friend in combat , the most help you can provide is by putting the enemy down as fast as you can, ether by playing a fast moving hard to hit distraction so that your friend can fire with no worry, by trying to run to the enemies back and shoot at the weak back armor, by intentionally going for the legs and weapons mounting parts ( but often it is quicker to just go for the CT with your friend and take them down ).

Edited by Nik Reaper, 31 December 2015 - 06:12 AM.

[Chados]

Find Your Fatty. And cover his backside! If the assaults die...YOU die!

I run primarily in the 55-80 ton category. 55s are a little light...80s a little heavy. Early in the game in solo queue I search out the assault lance and join up with them, even if I have to run half the map by myself to do it. This is to protect them from opportunistic lights while the early game starts. Here I prefer to have something that can fight at range, like an AC5 or uAC5, or AC10. Lasers are great but give your position away. PPCs are fun, but unless you're in a Marauder 3R or Catapult K2 their bolts are slooooowwww and hard to hit with at any distance over point-blank range.

At some point the fight is going to devolve into a midrange brawl, and when the assaults close in to grapple that's when I start playing wingman. I get in and let those SRMs rip. A range module for SRM4 and 6 is awesome. It makes such a difference being able to shoot from almost 300 meters, and the effective optimal range of a medium laser is right at max SRM range. I *wish* the IS had Clan SSRMs with their 360 meter range!!

An assault in a clinch is perfect to get in next to and peg away at his target. They're so busy with all that King Crab dakka that they might not even see you next to him shooting SRM volleys!

[That Friggin Spider]

On my fast builds that can't equip ecm (spider 5k notably) I will try to fit in an Active Probe if possible, as long as I don't have to sacrifice speed, firepower, or armour. I don't rely heavily on jumpjets in my lights, so I can usually find the tonnage.

Bap can be great, especially if you work in concert with an lrm equipped teammate, for hunting down enemy cheetohs, spider 5D's, ECM comandos, and Ravens.

If you can stay right on the light's tail while breaking their ECM, AND have a teammate raining lrms on them, it will usually be more than all but the steeliest pilots can handle. They will lose concentration and make mistakes in the dogfight, allowing you to eliminate them.

Of course, if you're on their tail like you should be, you'll eat a fair number of friendly lrms too, but friendly fire is part of the gig when you're playing the hound.

If you're into lights, or have a buddy who is, give this tactic a try when you anticipate flanking lights. Works especially well on the new polar map.

[That Friggin Spider]

Also, I can't really "recommend" this, because statistically you're probably better off with a different loadout...but even a single AC on a light mech can do wonders for suppressing and directing the attention of an enemy.

The "bang and clang" of autocannon rounds hitting your mech is something even the nerviest of assault pilots have trouble ignoring, even if it is a relatively non-threatening single ac/2.

[InspectorG]

ackstorm, on 29 December 2015 - 10:40 AM, said:

Despite how I mix my weapons up, I rarely use more than 4 buttons. Usually left and right click are for left and right arms (so I can fire around corners) and my two thumb buttons for chest-mounted weapons.

Ok. Few misconceptions here.

Ill assume you Solo drop mostly. Group drop/ Cw+Units have 'built-in' support via communication and target callers/leaders.

So for Solo in MWO:

Weapons are better boated than having overlapping range like BT. Counter intuitive from a BT standpoint but different games, different mechanics.

In Solo, best support is : DAMAGE
Yeah, not very romantic but Focused damage between weapons on a mech, between teammates, and unified into a 'push' is the winning formula.

For a beginner, pressing 'R' and locking is great support.
Keeping an eye on the Radar is spport because newbs get tunnel vision on their reticle and dont see the 4 red doritos crashing in on their flank 500m away.

The consumable UAV module, at 40k/per is expensive but GAME CHANGING if used well. Big 'IF' and takes skill.

NARC is a bit niche but workable in Solo. I would save it for later though.

ECM is like the grand daddy of support in Solo. Not as great or important as people think, but its the best 'Support' for random pugmates that there is eqipment-wise.

AMS is a waste.

Finally, VOIP and Texting teammates about whats going on can be valuable IF they know to listen.

Reference metamechs for builds and support your puggles with good play. Thats likely the best 'Cleric' role for MWO.

[Leone]

I respectfully disagree. It is the problem with opinions. Everyone's got em, an they're all a bit different.

~Leone.

[_____]

OP wants to help the team win? OK go kill as many enemy mechs as you can so your team doesn't have to carry you.