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This is a poll-only topic
A little dissertation on what makes a meta mech, meta.
"Ideal geometry possesses a narrow torso from any angle, so the distance you have to twist to redirect damage is small and so that torso sections are difficult to isolate. There is an emphasis on frontal profile over the sides. The horizontal cross-section through the torso should be cylindrical (i.e. NTG, BK) or cruciform (i.e. RFL). Cruciform has the advantage of being able to block sides using the center provided the sides are not overly wide and/or the nose has sufficient length, without necessarily exposing the opposite side. Cylindrical has to expose one side to block the other, so unlike cruciform it must always be in motion (not as good at actual shielding).
You want shield arms, for obvious reasons. Arms that cover the entire side are best, and if they can also cover the CT given enough angle, that's fantastic.
Legs should be mounted as close to the arm socket as possible, so that it is difficult to get full damage into the ST from the side once the arm is gone.
The cockpit should be mounted at or near the top of the 'Mech so there is no material to expose before you can actually see potential hostiles. Weapons should be mounted at or near the same level as the cockpit for the same reason.
For IS energy boats, you want most of your firepower in the torsos and you need one arm you can strip completely. IMHO, I think stacking all of your Large-class lasers (assuming B&B build, not ER LL boat) in one side is horrible and that you should always split them up lets you get them all crit at once and, IMHO, the ideal layout for an IS laser boat would be [2xE LT + 1xE CT + 1xE H + 2xE RT + 3xE RA] since that spreads the LLs out across all three torso parts, allows maximum DHS into the torsos and the good arm, and gives you a bump to 57/58 damage. Lower Arm Actuator, we don't need but I don't think it hurts too much given that we're out of slots with 19x DHS on a 350 engine.
For pure IS ballistics, you again want most of your firepower in the torsos. I don't think there's necessarily one single ideal for this, since whether or not you want to use Gauss is going to play a big role, but I'd say that [2xB LT + 2xB RT + 2xB RA] would cover the vast majority of combinations you want to try. That lets you do quadruple UAC/5 with an XL, stripping an arm for tonnage. It lets you run 6x AC/5 with an XL, too, or 3x UAC/5 + 2x AC/5, or 3x AC/10. When/if we get Light ACs, hard-point count starts mattering more for ballistics because we'll have the weight for more.
For IS Energy/Ballistic combo builds, the ideal layout is something like [2xE RT + 1xB RA] to get 2xPPC + 1xGauss in with an isXL. Also good is [1xB & 1xE LT + 1xB & 1xE LT]; that's PPC-dakka. For laser-Gauss, just replace the arm on the ideal IS energy boat with 1xB and that's about as good as it gets.
Ideal IS missile layout is pretty much identical to the ideal pure ballistic layout if you have six racks, for slot reasons. Better, though, would be four racks with between six and eight energy weapons, arranged [2xE LA + 2xM LT + 2xE CT + 2xM RT + 2xE RA]. Head and feet positions for ammo, sides for JJs and DHS. That's going to give you something worthy to fight a brawl TBR."
- Yeonne Greene
Edited by TheArisen, 08 February 2017 - 11:40 PM.
