Canned Beans, on 27 August 2017 - 10:50 PM, said:
Okay damn that is a lot of information. I will be coming over this a lot more later. Can you folks answer me a few questions more?
As an IS is there a point to normal lasers? aka isn't the ER-Medium laser just a straight upgrade to the regular Medium laser?
Also, if I don't like the Humpback what should I go for? I really love how the bushwacker looks, and I enjoy lasers. I kind of like missiles and lasers the most. I am not sure if my aim is good enough for any of the ACs.
Can you guys judge my match here? I took screenshots of the whole team and me too. I understand I didn't do nearly as well as most of the people on this team but, I am in trail mechs and I guess I'm still learning to aim.
I try to give you a short description of weapon classes and their ups and downs.
Hunchback is simply the most generic... most averange Battlemech in the game able to do all kinds of loadouts on its different variants without many ups and downs.
Your match was okish. 1200 dmg is ok for an beginner.
1200 dmg divided by 5 most dmg means max 240 dmg to criticaly damage an enemy...thats realy good. You even got a solo kill (thats most damage pluss killshot)
What pulls this down a bit is that you also did 13 assists and 4 killshots in total.
That means you fired at 13 mechs that did not die by you nor where criticaly damged by you.
You also killed 3 mechs that where not primarily damaged by you.
So you have to distribute 1200 damage over 17 mechs. That is an averange of 70 dmg per mech. That isn't much.
Since you did a solo kill this number even grows smaler when you now take into acount you also did 5 most damage.
That meens you realy damaged 5 mechs seriously and scratched the paint on 9....
If you now compare to the others dmg numbers in your team I would say most of them used primaryly LRMs on the only Map and in the only position where they thend to function.
If you too used LRMs and used all of your 4 mechs 1200dmg isn't much. (You can pretty easiely do 1200dmg with lrms in a solo match with one mech and you still did nothing exceptional)
But for a beginner it was a good start.
Now to the weapons:
>The Energy Family: Subcategorys Lasers and PPCs
General Upsides are no ammo requirements and low weight.
Downsides are tremendous heat buildup and low dps.
- Lasers come in 4 different kinds:
-- standart Lasers: The "oldest" type of laser that come in smal, medium and large sizes
Generaly standart Lasers give you a well rounded performance between burntime (time you need to stay on target to deliver the lasers full damage), recharge time, damage output and waste heat emmission.
Clans do not have standart Lasers.
In most situations you will tend to use a more speacialized weapon.
-- Extendet Range Lasers: Better range on cost of heat and burntime. Clan Lasers do more damage and weigth less than IS Lasers but also do even more heat and have even longer burntimes.
-- Pulse Lasers: Lasers that emit compressed pulses instead of an continus stream to deliver their damage over a shorter time on cost of range and heat. As with ER Lasers Clan Pulselasers do more damage and are lighter than IS but run hotter and have a longer burntime.
-- Heavy Lasers: Only Clans have them. HLasers have the same Range profiles as standart Lasers but doubble damage and burntime....not to speak of their heat emmisions.
--->In general Lasers are the mainstay of most loadouts and you should always consider to carry at least a few of them as backup weapons or suplemental weapons.
On Clan side they are flat out the best you can bring in most situations. While they do run hot there is no other weapon with that combination of dmg/weight/dps ratio, not to speak of your independence of ammo.
- Particle Projector Cannons: The closest thing to reallife would be a flash gun (wireless taser). A PPC fires a burst of supercharged Ions at a Target. They come in light, normal/ER, snubNose, Heavy sizes for IS. The Clans only have their ER PPC. Fire 2 at a time without penalty except you solely use LPPCs.
--light PPCs: 3 light PPCs = 1 Heavy PPC only that they require 2 more slots and a tonn less than a heavy.
Further light PPCs have a minimum range of 90m where they do not do any damage. 5dmg at 5 heat for 3 tonns and 2 slots and 540m range.
LPPCs can be quite good as addon weapons on very large mechs for some frontload damage or as primary weapons on smal mechs. You can fire 3 at a time without heatpenalty.
-- standart: The ancient basic PPC model. 10 dmg for 10 heat at 7 tonns and 3 slots. 90m minimum range and 540 effective. You can fire further with reduced damage till the blast expires.
Same as with standart lasers you will tend to use a weapon that is better for a certain task.
-- Extended Range: More range for more heat. The Clan Version of the ERPPC does 5 spash damage (2,5 to the neighbouring sections) on hit, has more range and requires one slot less. Clans have only this model.
A pretty good longrange support weapon...but quite hot.
-- snub nose: A standart PPC with shortened barrel that weights one ton less and has only half the standart effective range but without a minumum range. 10 dmg for 10 heat at 6 tons and 2 slots. Mixes quite good with SRMs and other splat weapons like LB20X. A good wapon for mixed frontload loadouts.
-- Heavy PPC: Massive Weapon with massive damage and heatoutput. 10tonns for 15 damage and 15 heat at 4 slots and 540m effective range and with 90m minimumrange.
Basicaly this is the energy alternative to Gauss weapons.
>Missiles and Rockets:
General Ups and downs: lighter than ACs but heavier than lasers, they all make spreaded damage but also can have an increased crit damage, they require lots of ammo but are cooler than lasers
LRMs, ATMs, SRMs, SSRMs, MRMs and Rocketlaunchers.
-- LRMs: Easy to use hard to master. While those things
seem to require the least skill to be used, since they are autoaim weapons, they also have the most hard and soft counters and can't realy be used without autoaim.
An enemy that knows what he is doing when droping in Quickplay will have his radardeprivation and AMS skilled and will either be impossible to keep locked and fired at or simply near invulnerable due to muliple AMS removing the fired missiles from existance.
Since there are lots of ppl thinking Points and Tonnage invested in AMS and Radardep are a waste there are always some dudes around to get eaten by slavering LRM boat.
LRMs come in RAK sizes of 5,10,15 and 20 missiles per salvo. Clan LRMs are lighter than IS LRMs but are fired in ripples rather than large clouds.
LRMs can be upgraded with Artemis fire controll systems to reduce their spread.
This only works on sighline. Any interruption whil cancel the effect.
Your or an other mech in your team may carry and use a TAG laser on an enemy with the same effect as an Artemis in addition to a TAG laser breaking through enemys ECM. TAG And Artemis do not stak.
Last but not least a mech with missile slots may carry a narc beacon launcher to mark an enemy with a radio transmitter that lasts a while and will render the marked enemy visible for its duration except when he gets shielded by an ecm.
NARC and TAG stak. NARC and Artemis stak.
UP sides: Can be used by people with aiming problems..even to some limited effectiveness when they know what they are doing. Inexperienced foes might panic when shot at with LRMs.
Downsides: ammunition ineffective and very heavy in relation to their
REAL acheavable damage.
Unreliable since there are so many factors that can make them work or not.
-- ATMs: Mechanic like LRMs but with a flatter flight curve and higher missile speed. ATMs have a dynamic dmg profile of 3dmg per missile at 120 to 270m, 2dmg per missile from 350 to 540m and one dmg from 620 to 1100m.
TAG and Narc work with ATMs. They require no Artemis because its build in by default. (TAG will not reduce ATM spread therefore only its lock time and ECM penetration.)
UPs: higher speed and flatter curve make them reach your target much faster than LRMs reducing the time you need them to hold on lock. Their high damage output on short and medium ranges can be crippling with a few good hits.
Downs: Like LRMs you either are very ineffective or very exposed. Also their low missile count makes them vulnerable to ams and they require a target to be sensor lockable for your missiles to be effective.
Their ammo efficience is even worse than LRMs.
--SRMs: straight flying missiles that try to fly to the point where your reticle was when you triggered. Come in RAK sizes of 2, 4, and six missiles. Can be slaved to Artemis for less spread. They do 2 dmg per missile and will be a good friend if you like it close and personal. Clan Raks wight half as IS but have considerably longer cooldown times.
Ups: Hardhitting frontload damage with averange to good ammo efficiency and medium heat. They are not effected by ECM, Radardep and nearly not at all affected of AMS.
Downs: you need a lot of them and you spread your damage --> the closer you are the better
--Streak SRMs: SRMs with a lock on mechanic. Since every missile locks to a different part of the enemy mech their spread can be ridiculous. Also
YOU HAVE TO LOCK ON TO FIRE AT ALL. But if you got the lock you will mostlikely hit the target...if it doesn't vanish behind a wall...behind a friend...behind you or if you ever get a lock at all.
Ups: Deadly against lightly armored mechs.
Downs: ineffective against larger mechs. Clan SSRMs got ridiculous reload times.
--MRMs: Pretty much SRMs with larger raks, lower dmg per rocket and higher range. While SRMs are fired as blobs MRMs are fired as streams. There are no electronics to improve their performance.
Ups: You can flood an enemy with fire steel and death....
Downs: hillarious spread, high heat, ammo inefficiency, facetime
--Rocketlaunchers: Oneshot hybrids between SRMs and MRMs with a minrange of 50m....use an additional Heatsink or more ams ammo or an ams system instead of an RL.
>Autocannons:
General Ups and downs: They are pretty cool running if seen as single weapon and deliver better dps and burst than all other weapons at the cost of high weight and low ammo.
There are standart ACs, Ultra ACs, LBX ACs and rotarry ACs
-- Standart ACs: IS standart ACs come in sizes of 2, 5, 10 and 20. The larger you go the less range you got but the more damage you do. There is something on clanside duped as standart AC. That is outright bullsh.. Those things are non spreading LBX that fire either 1, 2, 4 or 5 slugs.
Standart ACs deliver pinpoint damage over decent ranges at comparably low heat and with a good refire rate.
Your main problem might be to lead them correctly and their ammo requirements.
Upsides: low facetime, high flexibility, good heatmanagement
Downsides: lots of weight and slots required, smaler ACs need to be boated to be effective (at least 2for AC5 or 3 for AC2)
-- Ultra ACs: UACs
can be fired 2 times in the same refire cycle at the cost of an potential ammo jam. They unjam after a time but the chance is random.
IS UACs fire one slug for the AC2 and 5, 2 slugs for the 10 and 3 for the 20. Clan UACs fire one slug for the AC2, two for the 5, 4 for the 10 and 5 for the 20 ... they also are a bit lighter and smaler than IS UACs.
Your upsides are hillarious burst damage at the cost of ridiculously high ammo consumption rates, potential jam and distributed damage.
-- LB-X ACs: Those are automatic explosives shotguns in Battlemech format.
They too come in sizes of 2 to 20 like the other ACs.
The larger your bore is the greater your pellet spread. The smaler you go the more range.
While your refire rate is similar to the standart AC you do not need to aim that exact due to the LBX-es spread.
So you basicaly forgoe pinpoint damage to get a higher projectile speed and spreded damage.
LBX pellets have also an increased crit chance to destroy the enemys internals if they penetrate enemys armor.
Upsides: cool, easy to use, good dps, Critchance
Downsides: spreaded damage, parts of your blasts may miss the target at longer ranges
You need to boat smaler LBXes
>Gauss Weapons:
Light Gauss, standart Gauss, Heavy Gauss
Clans only have the standart but with lighter weigth and less slots than IS.
-- Gaussrifle: An EM linear accelerator that simply throws an heavy nonexplosive ferronickle slug at your enemy at incredible speeds. To fire the rifle you need to push and hold the fire button till the gun is charged when you release it fires.
If you hold too long the charge is lost (not the ammo though) 15tons at 7 slots for IS Gauss, 12t at 6 slots for Clan Gauss. It gives you 15 damage at 1 heat and high range.
Ups: Very high dmage at very low heat and high range.
Downs: large, heavy, low refire rate
--Light Gauss: IS only weapon that weights 12 tonns at 5 slots and does only 8 damage but at higher range and faster refire rate. Also has faster charge up. Its an odd weapon I found no real use for. (except my rapid fire quadlightgauss KGC
)
Very very high ammo efficiency though.
-- Heavy Gauss: Its as dangerous as it is hard to use. A single HGauss does 25 dmg and weights 18 tonns at 11 slots. Slower charge, same reload rate like normal Gauss.
While having only 270m full effective range your dmg decline is so slow that you do nearly as much dmg as an normal gauss at doubble your effective range. Also your ammo efficiency is very very low.
>Suplemental Weapons:
Those weapons where inherited by Mechwarriors lore of the Battletech universe and aren't primarily for doing damge against Battlemechs or armored vehicles at all.
-- MGs: They come in light, normal and heavy sizes with more dps for bigger MGs and less for lighter. Vice versa light MGs have more range and bigger ones less than standart.
A unique feature is that MGs have defacto no projectile speed. The speed you see in their stats is pure cosmetics.
Their behavior makes them like continuous stream lasers with a cone of fire (spread)
Flamers: ATM there is only one type. Flamers do little to no damage but heat up the target.
When you fire them you have some time where you get no heat yourself (yellow bar grows) when its full you get heat every second a bit more till you fload yourself.
They can be usefull at some situations but normaly are skipped to use something that actually hurts.
NARCs: Radiobeacons that are fired from a single tube missile launcher and cling to a target for a time.
They can be hidden by ecm but will stay active.
They increase lock on missile tracking strength (LRMS SSRMS and ATMS will follow a Narced target better) and reduce their spread. Also NARCs will make the enemy visible on your minimap without sightline.
AMS and Laser AMS: Radarcontrolled automatic rapidfire Guns and lasers that target incomming missiles and try to shoot them down. Different missiles and rockets have different hitpoints. LRMs have the least and ATMs the most hitpoints.
AMS requires ammo...lots of ammo. Laser AMS generates heat..lots of heat.
Edited by The Basilisk, 28 August 2017 - 07:23 AM.
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