32 replies to this topic

[Kangarad]

Ive seen some threads pop up here that realy are mind numbingly stupid on why they chose what.


So heres a quick rundown on what to take for what type of play ... by me.

DPS(Damage Per Second):

Firepower tree:
-Cooldown: directly increases dps by increasing refire time
-Heat Gen: ofsets increased fire rate by lowering heat per shots
-Range: for dps outside the previous max range, aka more max dps range and mroe fallof range

-Velocity: makes stuff fly faster and hit your enemy faster... can be compensated for by skill
- Missile/LBX Spread... decreases spreading and chance to miss on a good aim... can be compensated for by skill.

-High Explosive: More crit damage = more dps (missiles only)
-Laser Duration: directly decreases laser fire time and therefore cooldown too. (lasers only)
-UAC jam Chance: UAC's jam less frequent = longer dps upkeep at double taps (UAC/cUAC ONLY)

Operations:
-Cool Run: decreases time needed to cool said generated heat
-Heat Containment: for when you are not 2/2 in heat efficency, allows for longer dps = more damage

-Quick ignition: only for when you overheated without having override on and want to be faster back on doing dps... not needed by good pilots, realy.

Miscellaneous:
-Consumable Slot: for more cool shots /strikes/arty realy
-Enhanced coolshot: realy, more cooling for more hot dps.
-Adv. Salvos (more dps on strikes/arty)
-Enhanced Spotting (for more precise strikes/arty)

Jumpjet Efficiency:
-Heat shielding: decreases heat gain from having active jumpjets (incase you use em while you dps.... realy now=?)

(Agility:
-Speed Tweak: Mech moves faster. (aka go mount a smaller engine and bring more guns/heatsinks... warning! smaller engines may contain less heatsinks and engine heat sinks are best heat sinks .... realy))

^thats it. theres nothin fancy there there are no other quirks that can increase your actual DPS no matter what others seem to say.

Mobility:

Operations:
-Hill Climb: decreases negative from running up steep hills however does not change max degree of climbing for mechs.

Agility:

-Kinetic burst: Acellerate forward and backwards faster.
-Hard Brake: allows faster decelleration towards 0 aka standing still.
-Torso Yaw: turn to the side further.
-Torso Pitch: look up and down further with your torsi.
-Torso Speed: lets you turn your torsi faster from side to side/up/down.
-Anchor Turn: lets your mech turn its legs faster.
-Speed Tweak: Mech moves faster.

Jumpjet Efficiency:
-Vent Calibration: longer jumpjet burns for further jumps
-Lift Speed: go up ... faster (good for poking)
-Vectoring: go forward ... faster (does not actualy increase fly speed over your max run speed... just increases forward thrust and lets you reach said max speed faster if you werent at it allready. Not good for poking)

Mech Operations:
-Speed Retention: for when your legged but still want to go fast (up to 50, dont use if 40% of your current speed is 50 or greater anyway)

^thats it all the other stuff wont make you faster , realy.

Defence(aka tanking stuff):

Armor Structure:

-Reinforced Casing: makes it less likely for enemy weapons to crit against you
-Shock Absorbance: less fall damage to your legs (hint, dont take this unless you fall from high places, alot, which your realy should not)
-Armour hardening: more armour (less percent for higher tonnages)
Skeletal density: More structure (less percent for higher ton mechs... yes that means you atlas.)
-AMS Overload: Increases AMS rate of fire by alot (AMS has to be equiped + ammo, against missiles only, that includes narc/srm/ssrm's/lrms/mrm's/atms/r's) Can be compensated by exploiting a certain bug.

Mech operation:

-Improved Gyros: Reduces screenshake

Sensor Systems:
-Radar Deprivation: breaks enemy locks faster when behind cover
-Enhanced ECM: Increases ECM range

^there isn't more to it. realy.

Scouting/Targeting:

Sensor Systems:
-Targeting Decay: keeps locks available for longer when enemys hide behind things
-Sensor Range: increase range at which you can lock onto stuff
-Target retention: allows you to keep targets that run behind you locked.
-Target Info Gathering: Decreases time until enemy Doll shows up to show you damage/weapon stati of your enemys.
-Advanced Zoom: adds another zoom stage to your original zoom for more zoom so that you can hit targets that are further out better.
-Seismic Sensors: shows nearby enemy movements on map (range in meeters from your mech)
-Enhanced ECM: Increases ECM range

Misc:
-Consumable slot: for more UAV's
-UAV Duration: ads duration in seconds to uav's.
-UAV range: increases Spoting range of UAV'S
-Extra UAV: for more UAV's
-Enhanced Narc: Increase Velocity and Duration
-Capture Assist: increases Capturing speed in Concquest matches for your mech only.



Thats it. dont let anyone tell ya that DPS is increased by going defence. because it realy isn't ... and you only have those 91 points to spend so you cant take most of defence anyway if you truly go dps.


TL'DR ... those quirks do exactly what they say tehy do and do not miracilously perform good at some other stuff.

PPS' Armour Structure and mobility realy sucks for 100t assaults due to loss of effectivenes due to being smaller % or just smaller values giving less per %... so you might aswell go full firepower.

[Lupis Volk]

I mean as a person who was used to building the mech to fit the quirks, building the quirks to fit the mech is quite the culture shock.

[Johnny Z]

Is it hard to use? No. But you may be surprised how stupid some people are.

"I cannot think, therefore I complain" - MechWarrior Online Troll.

[Lupis Volk]

Johnny Z, on 30 May 2017 - 08:22 PM, said:

Is it hard to use? No. But you may be surprised how stupid some people are.

"I cannot think and over come said task, therefore I complain and complain hard i shall do" - average Online gamer.

ftfy

Edited by Lupis Volk, 30 May 2017 - 08:25 PM.

[Johnny Z]

Should this game be made for the exceptionally stupid? I don't think so, but from all the negative comments and I quit topics it seems some do.

[Randall Flagg]

Build using this priority (in order of important to least important):


Firepower (heat, duration/ballistics), Survival (structure, then armor), Operations (cool run, heat containment), Auxiliary (arty, then
coolshot) > the rest.

[Kangarad]

SKINLESS, on 30 May 2017 - 08:42 PM, said:

Build using this priority (in order of important to least important):


Firepower (heat, duration/ballistics), Survival (structure, then armor), Operations (cool run, heat containment), Auxiliary (arty, then
coolshot) > the rest.

no sir. cool shots are more important that survival, infact most mechs do not even live a single 30 point alpha strike wich in our current 60 point alpha levels is low longer with the full maxed out in bonus. there are realy only a handfull of mega quirked mediums and lights that may take survivability that would not have profited more from mobility and firepower.


Coolshots are actualy one of the first things to get for any laser vomit mech. those 2x27 allow 2 more alpha strikes in short succession... regardless of whenever or not you have skilled into firepower or not.

also Jump jet tree is only okay to take at 4+ jumpjets.

build usign this priority:
Fastmover aka most lights: Mobility/sensor/firepower(or defence depending on quirks)
Medium: Mobility/Firepower/ (Defence or sensor depending on quirks)
Heavy(fast): Mobility/Firepower/Sensor
Heavy(slow):Firepower/mobility/sensors
Assaults: Firepower/Sensors(replace with defence on high end quirk mechs for brawling)/mobility

Long range = sensors/mobility have priority
close range = Firepower/Defence have priority

going over 300 in engine? allways get speed tweak
going over 90 in speed? get speed tweak
having less than 1 in heat efficiency? get Firepower: Operations
Have 2 in heat efficiency? Ignore :Firepower Operations

and so on.

[Randall Flagg]

Thanks for enlightening me on the proper ways to build a mech using skill tree. I'll pass it on.

Have a great day.

[Bud Crue]

Is the skill tree that hard to use?
No of course not. It's just monotonous and boring and frankly once you get the hang of it and understand just how minimally impactful the individual nodes are it is even fairly ridiculous.
But hard to use? Nope. It's just not very fun.

Think of it like a game of monopoly. Some poor schmuck has to count out all the money and shuffle all the cards before you play. That is what you are doing with the skills tree. But after a few games you know that to start again you will need 2 $500s, 2 $100's, 2 $50's, 6 $20s etc. It will be the same monotonous chore everytime but here it is 21 mobility, a dozen in sensors, 1 in misc....or whatever trips your trigger. It's not fun, but if you want to play the game ya have to do it anyway.

[Burke IV]

As was pointed out elsewhere on here, laser duration quirks are useless for some reason, like they all add up to 0.1 second or sometihng. I dont know if its true, sounds about right tho. Its not difficult or overwhelming, its just..

Why is a mech with JJs forced to take hill climb nodes anyway?

Edited by Burke IV, 31 May 2017 - 05:33 AM.

[killerkrill]

I just wish they would condense the tree so each node is more significant. As it is I'm getting 2.25% heat reduction while I was on my way to grab the UAC nodes and that number is so insignificant it might as well not exist.

[Nik Reaper]

It's not even just not knowing what what does, it's also about what is better, is 10% coolrun better then -10.7% heat gen, or how about 4% coolrun and 6.5% heat gen, is 5~8 armor on the ST better or worse then +12% torso twist.. , I'd say that this is more of an issue then reading the node description.

At max armor and structure quirks without inbuilt quirks , most mechs do not even get an extra 1/2 alpha to a location, and in any mech twisting will save you a lot more then face tanking, but it may not be apparent to some and they use to always get the twist speed before, when mastering 3, but now they have to opt in to get it.

Edited by Nik Reaper, 31 May 2017 - 05:57 AM.

[Humpday]

Burke IV, on 31 May 2017 - 05:32 AM, said:

As was pointed out elsewhere on here, laser duration quirks are useless for some reason, like they all add up to 0.1 second or sometihng. I dont know if its true, sounds about right tho. Its not difficult or overwhelming, its just..

Why is a mech with JJs forced to take hill climb nodes anyway?

Yeah its pretty useless, I'd only take it if the mech itself already had a duration quirk, just to stack that stat, other than that, don't take it.

EDIT: Do the calc by hand or just mouse over the weapon in the mech bay...it shows you what effect the node is having.

Edited by Humpday, 31 May 2017 - 05:59 AM.

[Burke IV]

Ah right i been doing my experiments on a tree planner It seems odd to me that after these dramatic new changes... some mechs still have quirks. I wonder how they are enjoying balancing this

[process]

The skill tree isn't difficult per se, it's overly convoluted. The enormous array of nodes means each is only carrying a minuscule improvement value which is difficult to appreciate when not aggregated, which is a result of this game not, for good reason, being a typical RPG. We simply can't have stats increase beyond 10-15% without creating major discrepancies, so you end up with values like +0.75% -- meaningless in practice.

Because the values are small and unintuitive, it takes a tremendous amount of trial-and-error to get a "feel" for the improvements. Unfortunately, because PGI made the asinine decision to implement a respec fee, testing alternate configurations comes with a price that puts a damper on the skill tree experience.

For example, I was testing whether poptart Victors were viable again; full jumpjets and maxed out jumpjet tree. My experience in the testing ground was underwhelming. Now I've sunk 20 SP into a tree I have no intention of using, plus the potential of having to reinvest 8,000 XP to respec, and upwards of an additional 16,000 XP and 900,000 cbills for 20 new SP. I can accommodate this pretty easily since I have a massive pile of HSP, HXP, GXP, cbills, but how fun does that seem for a new player?

Burke IV, on 31 May 2017 - 06:03 AM, said:

Ah right i been doing my experiments on a tree planner It seems odd to me that after these dramatic new changes... some mechs still have quirks. I wonder how they are enjoying balancing this

The skill tree is not a substitute for quirks. There is some modest variation in the skill tree to balance weight class and IS/Clan, but not at a chassis-level where the quirks are applied. That said, there should be good reasons for those chassis to have quirks or increased baseline stats -- mechs that are disadvantaged by hitboxes are a clear example.

Edited by process, 31 May 2017 - 09:23 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Burke IV, on 31 May 2017 - 05:32 AM, said:

As was pointed out elsewhere on here, laser duration quirks are useless for some reason, like they all add up to 0.1 second or sometihng. I dont know if its true, sounds about right tho. Its not difficult or overwhelming, its just..

Why is a mech with JJs forced to take hill climb nodes anyway?

10% is 10%
More concentrated damage, 1 second cLPL burns.

UAC jam chances are more pointless, as its 5% OF 17/15%
Less than 1%

[Bishop Steiner]

Only if one is mentally deficient or intentionally obstinate.

[Skanderborg]

it took me 2 minutes to understand , and 1 minute to click everything. Its pretty simple.

[Accused]

It's easy to understand it's pretty ****. 5 or 6 different types of xp, gated nodes, does nothing to reduce ttk or differentiate mechs by chassis let alone allow people to properly customize their mechs.

[Mystere]

Kangarad, on 30 May 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

Is The Skill Tree Realy That Hard Unfun To Use?

FTFY.

And in case that was not clear enough, my answer is "Yes! It's definitely not fun to use.".

Edited by Mystere, 31 May 2017 - 09:58 AM.