10 replies to this topic

[Hexsyn]

Before I get into my question... I have a confession to makes--I gotta go fast. Hell, back in the days of MW2, I played the firemoth almost exclusively.

Because of this speed addiction, I've been playing MWO for a few weeks now, and I am just now purchasing my first medium and heavy mechs... may never buy an assault, who knows. Now that I can get these heavier mechs into the mechlab, I'm getting the feeling that properly building a good non-light mech requires a different approach than building for a light mech.

So my question to you, dear community, is this: How do YOU tend to approach the process of building a heavier mech to fit your own desires?
For example, do you figure out the weapons you want first, then tweak armor, engine size, ammo, JJ's, etc. around your chosen weapons? Do you cut other components to add space for extra heat sinks, or do you just jam in as many heat sinks as space and weight allows once other aspects are taken care of?

Coming from the limitations of building light mechs, my process tends to be the following:
1. Pick 2-4 weapons that fit the playstyle I want.
2. Click ferro, endo, and Double heat sinks
3. Drop in an XL engine that is at least 250+ for heat sink purposes
4. Fill in a reasonable amount of ammo, if applicable
5. Adjust Armor up and ammo down until I am happy
Of course, I revisit things several times from play experience, but this is my general mindset. Now that I am trying to build heavier mechs, I get hung-up in trying to figure out how to play with these extra tonnage and hardpoint options that were never an option for me in light mechs--it is a sort of "spoiled for choice" conundrum for me. If pressed, I think my #1 current issue is knowing when it is best to sacrifice other aspects to add in more heat sinks.

Anyways, that is where I sit at current. Would love to hear the personal build philosophies of experienced MWO players out there! And if worse-comes-to-worse, I can always keep riding high on the thrill of dropping mad SRM-4s on the backs of assault mechs from the psychotic comfort of my RVN-H

[Ryokens leap]

Don't click ferro. Ferro is only useful on a handful of builds if u have extra slots and need tonnage. PGI should put ferro at the bottom of the upgrade list so new players don't choose it first. Endo and dub heatsinks are required for almost all builds but ferro is very build specific.

[Hexsyn]

Ryokens leap, on 04 January 2016 - 12:25 PM, said:

Don't click ferro. Ferro is only useful on a handful of builds if u have extra slots and need tonnage. PGI should put ferro at the bottom of the upgrade list so new players don't choose it first. Endo and dub heatsinks are required for almost all builds but ferro is very build specific.

I understand that the tonnage benefit is minimal for the slots you give up, and yeah I wouldn't necessarily do this on my future mechs, but I've done it on my ravens so far just because tonnage has been my limiting factor, not slots. Good point though.

[Ingga Raokai]

Medium and Heavy, the sweet spot of the class. I think how you build the loadout is really depends on the mech itself, such as whether they are XL friendly or not, Hunchback an example of not XL friendly (not exlusively must STD engine, but you better off with STD) and SHadowhawk is XL friendly becasue of their torso size, eventhouh shadowhawk is 5t heavier.

try this site to plan around
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...5e4a0e2db353452

[LeeNTien]

Depends on a your tastes.... some people go "full speed!!1one" on their heavier mechs as well, and get the heaviest possible engine on their heavies, and choose those, that have good speeds and high top-engines as well, be it on Mediums (Griffin / Wolverine that go 114kph - not even mentioning Cicada, which is basically a light), Heavies (Dragon / Quickdraw - 104kph) or even Assaults (Battlemaster - 82kph).
Even fitting XL in a bid to flank and then run away from damage, or at least to lose the CT before sides...
Some players even do good in those O_o'

Edited by LeeNTien, 04 January 2016 - 02:09 PM.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Hexsyn, on 04 January 2016 - 12:28 PM, said:

I understand that the tonnage benefit is minimal for the slots you give up, and yeah I wouldn't necessarily do this on my future mechs, but I've done it on my ravens so far just because tonnage has been my limiting factor, not slots. Good point though.

Let's say that, as you get heavier it is less and less worthwhile having FF armor. Beyond 45 tons, you probably wouldn't want it at all unless boating AC/2s.

There comes a point when you wouldn't even want Endosteel structure, because you need the slots more than you need the weight (AS7-S(L) comes to mind, with AC/20 and 4x ASRM-6).

With a LCT chassis, there's no reason in the world not to take both Endo and Ferro, because you can't put anything in it big enough to need all those slots anyway.

I guess it's just a matter of the need for critical slots increasing more-or-less proportionally with mech weight, and the first of those two slot-consuming upgrades to get skipped is the far-less-efficient (and over-hyphenated) FerroFibrous Armor.

[Hexsyn]

Ingga Raokai, on 04 January 2016 - 12:48 PM, said:

Medium and Heavy, the sweet spot of the class. I think how you build the loadout is really depends on the mech itself, such as whether they are XL friendly or not, Hunchback an example of not XL friendly (not exlusively must STD engine, but you better off with STD) and SHadowhawk is XL friendly becasue of their torso size, eventhouh shadowhawk is 5t heavier.

I've learned enough to have rough ideas on when XL is a bad idea for sure, even if a little demon inside me desires to put one in an atlas some day... just to be contrary lol

[Eggs Mayhem]

I can speak more on mediums than heavies. It's best to think about medium mechs not as a lighter heavy, but as a heavier light. There are exceptions of course, and these are dictated more by engine cap than anything else. To mirror your format, I'll run through my design questions I ask myself when kitting out mediums:

1. How fast do I want to go? Bare minimum for me for any medium is 81 pre-speed tweak (engine rating 5x weight), and the maximum I tend to go is 129.6 (engine rating 8x weight).
2. XL or standard? This comes down to 2 things primarily, hitboxes and structure quirks. Some mechs do poorly with XL engines strictly because of hitboxes, like Hunchbacks, and some are more suited to carry XL engines, like Enforcers. Mechs that have better CT structure quirks make better STD engine mechs due to their even further increased longevity.
3. Mixed loadout or specialist? Some mechs after dumping a large engine in them simply won't have the tonnage to support a useable mixed loadout, so I tend to leave the mixed loadouts for the heavier, slower mediums like centurions or shadowhawks.
4. Higher DPS or Higher Alpha? To me this decision is based mostly on step 1, faster mechs do better with higher alphas (boom n zoom) and slower mechs do better with higher sustained DPS.

As others have said Endo and DHS are no-brainers, save a couple energy boats that need the crit space for DHSs.

[Anachronda]

Fast is relative. The fastest assaults and heavies I have been able to find are 75-80 kph or thereabouts. Mediums can go somewhat over 100kph depending on build, but obviously not 150+ kph like a light. This si all with speedtweak, of course, which is still very helpful even though it was nerfed. I feel your need for speed as I am addicted as well. The people in this thread had some good suggestions on faster fat mechs. I started it asking about ballistic builds but there is some energy info in there, too.

I wish smurfy had a table showing max speed for mechs, but it's useful. The MWO wiki does have speeds listed for the mechs therein but in my experience that wiki is not up to date whereas smurphy is getting data right from the game. I've been meaning to do up a spreadsheet to make quests like this easier, but haven't. If I figure out how to get data from smurfy directly, it will probably speed that up.

[Phobic Wraith]

Hexsyn, on 04 January 2016 - 01:06 PM, said:

I've learned enough to have rough ideas on when XL is a bad idea for sure, even if a little demon inside me desires to put one in an atlas some day... just to be contrary lol

Which is what I did forever in my HBK-4P: The "Murderback"

It was my unofficial protest to ghost heat. In all honesty it was bad and it made me a bad person for having it built that way, but oh it was delightful coring mechs well above my pay grade in one alpha then running away.

But to answer your original question, I usually start from one of two places with builds, I either see someone running something that looks interesting and try to build it myself, or I decide I want to try a specific set of weapons then find a mech that fits them. There are probably better ways to build a ride, but I enjoy the experimentation.

I would stick to a few basic guidelines until you can get your newly ponderous feet under you.

First: Build a mech with the intention of being able to stick with the group. This applies primarily to IS chassis, because clan mechs can't really switch out engines. The Direwolf suffers primarily from an inability to stay with a group.

Second: build your mech with either symmetry or asymmetry in mind, this seems obvious, but the practice of using a shield arm and shield torso isn't exactly the same as running a light. Light chassis favor speed in being able to twist away and heavier chassis tend to favor precision - in other words finding the right angle so that the enemy can't hit a vital component, because let's face it; you're sure not running away from many engagements.

Third: don't scrap ideas right away. I personally don't get a feel for how good or bad my build is in the game until I've put nearly 50 or so matches under my belt with any build. There are exceptions, like flamer thunderbolts and AC-2 victors (sometimes stuff is so obviously bad that it's just plain bad). Be that as it may, I'd suggest you keep practicing until you either know your build is crap or you get a better idea. They always come.

And Finally: Don't panic. It's true for any weight class, but it gets exponentially more important based on how many hits you should be tanking for the team.

And one final afterthought, weapon groups are your friend. Sometimes builds just don't work with one or two buttons.

I just realized that that sort of turned into a "how to mechwarrior guide." Sorry, you probably already know most of that stuff.

Edited by Phobic Wraith, 04 January 2016 - 01:51 PM.

[Scyther]

My own experience has been that, going up weight classes, your armor is not as much protection as you think it will be. You are a bigger target, a slower target, a higher-priority target, and you can't take cover behind a smaller object anymore.

That translates to: max out armor, except maybe half a ton trimmed from head and legs. Then beef up the speed/engine size to the minimum I feel is necessary to get where I need to be and get out again (typically 90kph for meds and 72kph for heavies). Pop on double heat sinks, and endo steel.

Now see how much space/weight I have for weapons. I want to get off at least 2 good, solid alphas at my engagement range for that mech before I have to duck for cover or cooldown. Jimmy in the biggest ones I can for that, fill or tweak any leftover space, and save the build (using http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab of course).

Then I generally pull a few things out, or bump the engine up, add/remove heat sinks, see if fewer-slot weapons give me equivalent punch but more room for DHS or ammo, that sort of thing.