48 replies to this topic

[SilentScreamer]

Most Battletech mech configurations do not work well in Mechwarrior Online.

Tabletop is turn based. Many mech builds in Battltech are generalists, equiped to fight at multiple ranges, against not just mechs, but vehicles or infantry. Weapon fire hits randomized locations on mechs. Standing still and firing is perfectly acceptable, especially from wooded hexes. You as a player are normally controlling multiple mechs which work together to support each other.

Mechwarrior Online is real-time. MWO has higher heat caps, faster reload times, and less effective heatsinks. Mechs tend to be specialists. Experienced pilots can easily pinpoint specific parts of a mech, if you stand still and fire you are asking to be cored/headshotted. Players control only one mech at a time and teamwork is not a given.

With all these differences, is there a MWO build you use which you would field in tabletop? (Engine ratings, ammo location or heatsinks may differ due to official Battletech mech construction rules).

I love my custom Cataphract 3D with 2 LB10s and 4 medium lasers. I normally play stock 3025 mechs in tabletop though so I have not had a chance to try it out.

[Metus regem]

Generally speaking, most MWO builds work poorly in TT, just due to the nature of accuracy between the two systems.

[SilentScreamer]

Okay, another example based on this build for the Firestarter FS9-S:
https://mwo.smurfy-n...1b376db008a7f7a

- decrease the build XL engine down to 245 and add more jump jets
- existing 5 medium pulse lasers would work well for the mech and it is already well armored

A jumping light that moves 7/11 and armed with pulse lasers would be a great backstabber.

Edited by SilentScreamer, 23 February 2018 - 07:14 PM.

[Koniving]

I'll be running a few MWO builds into Megamek in which they will fight a series of enemies and I'll tally their repair, upkeep, etc.

I welcome suggestions for MWO builds, they will be run with their stock versions as a control in determining both performance and cost efficiency. Of course, due to limitations the MWO builds need to use a tabletop compatible engine.. So weight times 2 is the minimum engine size, + its weight = each increment of engine available.

Megamek can handle simultaneous turns and through mods, the accuracy issue can be mitigated.

[Karl Streiger]

I can run almost every of my builds in TT, but the main reason I never succumbed to one mouse button builds.
Since Closed Beta the minimum (with exception of YLW) are 4 TICs

Till HSR broke the piloting skill in MWO (aand SRMs) I used a Atlas D mod that was super flexible in MWO as well as in TT.
300 STD, Gauss, 2 PPC, 1 LPL, 2 SRM6s 14DHS

Edited by Karl Streiger, 24 February 2018 - 12:09 AM.

[SilentScreamer]

Koniving, on 23 February 2018 - 11:46 PM, said:

I'll be running a few MWO builds into Megamek in which they will fight a series of enemies and I'll tally their repair, upkeep, etc.

I welcome suggestions for MWO builds, they will be run with their stock versions as a control in determining both performance and cost efficiency.

Sounds interesting, but since most stock builds in MWO use standard structure and standard heatsinks I would consider changing your control from the MWO "stock version" to simply a similar tonnage mech with double heatsinks (endo optional) and a similar build.

So instead of comparing the Firestarter build I posted to the FS9-S stock build, use MegaMek to make your control a Havok, Longshot, Ostscout OTT-9S, Tiburon or the best example I can find the Venom (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Venom).

[Koniving]

SilentScreamer, on 24 February 2018 - 01:12 AM, said:

Sounds interesting, but since most stock builds in MWO use standard structure and standard heatsinks I would consider changing your control from the MWO "stock version" to simply a similar tonnage mech with double heatsinks (endo optional) and a similar build.

So instead of comparing the Firestarter build I posted to the FS9-S stock build, use MegaMek to make your control a Havok, Longshot, Ostscout OTT-9S, Tiburon or the best example I can find the Venom (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Venom).

You'd be surprised. Battletech's stock mechs usually slaughter MWO's "meta" builds in BT....
Single heatsinks aren't such a hinderence in BT. In fact, MWO's mechs are excessively cooled to the point of blatantly wasted tonnage, and so loaded with ammo that when they explode they take out entire city blocks and dozens of mechs around them...

And that's without including "Stackpoling."

Not to mention your average MWO build has a base cost of 35 to 60 million cbills and impossible upkeep..

What many people don't realize is MWO offers -- before skill nodes or quirks -- between 3 and 19 times the damage rate and heat of their Battletech counterparts in a 10 second time slice.
For example the RAC/5 in Battletech with its 30 damage in 10 seconds... is only half of what what an AC/20 does in MWO. And the RAC/5 only generates a maximum of 6 heat in 10 seconds.
Small and medium lasers are colder in BT per damage rating, but only net 1/3rd or less damage in 10 seconds compared to MWO's versions.

So when you plug MWO mechs into BT... they just don't work. Smaller weapons don't magically shoot faster and do loads more damage than bigger weapons. That added speed is nice, but if you're actually using it because of the way the mechs flail around as they move (since they're a lot smaller; Atlas in MWO is 17.8 meters tall, Atlas in BT lore is less than 14 meters, and in BT tabletop mechs are assumed to be approximately 12 meters tall give or take). Not to mention the issues of tripping, sliding, falling over, etc.. Walking through a ground fire adds +2 units of heat which in BT is 6.67% heat. Probably the only thing meta mechs can ignore is the heat and issues with melting heatsinks, but most of them can't fire enough for it to matter.

The only remotely effective MWO build is the LRM boat.... and the laser vomit.

Edited by Koniving, 24 February 2018 - 01:36 AM.

[Zergling]

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 01:18 AM, said:

Single heatsinks aren't such a hinderence in BT.

In TT Battletech, single heatsinks are actually kinda terrible compared to doubles, which is why almost every 'Level 2' (old tech/rules levels system) design used doubles.

Going from 3025 era / Level 1 to 3050+ era / Level 2, double heat sinks were the single biggest upgrade, with a bunch of stock mechs in TRO3050 being hobbled due to their usage of single heatsinks.

Eg, the Atlas AS7-K that had 20 single heatsinks with a 300XL engine; if it had double heatsinks it could have fit the same weapons with a 300 standard engine.
Or the Grasshopper GHR-5J; it had 22 single heatsinks. It could swap them out for 22 double heatsinks, but that would have left it badly oversinked; it would have been better off with 17 doubles and a second ER Large Laser.

That's not to say effective TT mechs can't be made with single heatsinks, but almost always doubles are better.

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 01:18 AM, said:

In fact, MWO's mechs are excessively cooled to the point of blatantly wasted tonnage

Not really; most MWO energy boats are undersinked compared to what they'd require in TT.

Eg, take this meta laser vomit Hellbringer; 2x Heavy Large Laser, 5x ER Medium Laser, 24 double heatsinks. In TT, that'd be 61 heat generation versus 48 heat dissipation.

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 01:18 AM, said:

Not to mention your average MWO build has a base cost of 35 to 60 million cbills and impossible upkeep..

That is incorrect; MWO mechs aren't any more expensive than TT counterparts that run LFEs or XLs. Eg, the Hellbringer above would only cost 17.7 million cbills in TT.

And it is a rare mech to be in the 35-60 million cbill range; the only stock TT mech to be in that range that doesn't have an XXL engine is the Executioner, which varies from 35.2 to 36.8 million cbills.

Edited by Zergling, 24 February 2018 - 01:46 AM.

[Bombast]

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 01:18 AM, said:

Single heatsinks aren't such a hinderence in BT.

That's a lie. DHS are probably one of the most destabilizing tech changes in Battletech - If you were only able to use one piece of Tech 2 equipment, you'd be a fool to choose anything besides DHS.

Quote

In fact, MWO's mechs are excessively cooled to the point of blatantly wasted tonnage

Depends. Missile and Autocannon boats, maybe. Energy boats are often grossly under cooled.

Quote

, and so loaded with ammo that when they explode they take out entire city blocks and dozens of mechs around them...

That's probably the biggest problem going from MWO to TT. Excessive Ammo+Crit System=Boom.

[SilentScreamer]

I was hoping for some suggested mech builds. I realize that with thousands of variations very few builds will work well for both tabletop Battletech and MWO. This is not my first rodeo, I've had the 3rd edition Battletech box set and MW2:Mercs for decades to play with mech builds.

Like Karl's Atlas or the FS9 build I posted above, what mechs do you use in MWO that you would also field in a tabletop game?

Edited by SilentScreamer, 24 February 2018 - 07:54 AM.

[Koniving]

Edit -- sorry to have to edit it again, it drowned in HTML code for no apparent reason.
Last edit:
Decided to spoiler it.

Spoiler

Zergling, on 24 February 2018 - 01:46 AM, said:

In TT Battletech, single heatsinks are actually kinda terrible compared to doubles, which is why almost every 'Level 2' (old tech/rules levels system) design used doubles.
Going from 3025 era / Level 1 to 3050+ era / Level 2, double heat sinks were the single biggest upgrade, with a bunch of stock mechs in TRO3050 being hobbled due to their usage of single heatsinks.
Eg, the Atlas AS7-K that had 20 single heatsinks with a 300XL engine; if it had double heatsinks it could have fit the same weapons with a 300 standard engine.
Or the Grasshopper GHR-5J; it had 22 single heatsinks. It could swap them out for 22 double heatsinks, but that would have left it badly oversinked; it would have been better off with 17 doubles and a second ER Large Laser.
That's not to say effective TT mechs can't be made with single heatsinks, but almost always doubles are better.
Not really; most MWO energy boats are undersinked compared to what they'd require in TT.
Eg, take this meta laser vomit Hellbringer; 2x Heavy Large Laser, 5x ER Medium Laser, 24 double heatsinks. In TT, that'd be 61 heat generation versus 48 heat dissipation.
That is incorrect; MWO mechs aren't any more expensive than TT counterparts that run LFEs or XLs. Eg, the Hellbringer above would only cost 17.7 million cbills in TT.
And it is a rare mech to be in the 35-60 million cbill range; the only stock TT mech to be in that range that doesn't have an XXL engine is the Executioner, which varies from 35.2 to 36.8 million cbills.

Stock Prime.
Loki (Hellbringer) Prime
Clan TW
65 tons
BV: 2,654
Cost: 18,868,437 C-bills
Source: TRO 3050 - Succession Wars
Movement: 5/8
Engine: 325 XL
Double Heat Sinks: 13 [26]
Gyro: Standard Gyro
Internal: 104
Armor: 128/211
Carrying Capacity:
One battle armor squad

Lets look at that again.

"Cost: 18,868,437 C-bills"

Now lets make your build.
This will be assuming the cost based on it literally rolling off the shelf with these parts (built from the construction rules in the MekLab)
With just the heatsinks and nothing else (stripped of the rest), already at 15 million.
For some reason I'm unable to add heavy large lasers or find them despite putting it at Unofficial to unlock all the weapons, will try to figure that out but I'll use the Sarna-listed price for them. (PS, what the hell is a Wolverine's PPC?)

Now technically this build is impossible because of armor (Omnimechs can't change armor amounts), but we're gonna ignore that...
17,199,719
is the actual cost I was able to bring up from building it.

Post-script Edit -- found out what's going on. Its giving me price based on the production year 2926 when the cbill was worth something. Will ignore that for now, can't really help it without editing core information or jumping into Mek HQ to actually build it based on 3060 in which I know it'll be quite a bit more expensive.

Legacy again (pre-edit) :
Well ****, why does the Atlas K roll off at 26 million stock with a 12 million cbill XL 300 engine?
The XL engines really do cost different for each tonnage.

However, the Hellbringer generates 63 heat out of 48. If you were to fire it all at the same time using the True Alpha Strike (the optional command, NOT the rulebook; can't believe they named a rulebook that).. (Basically, alpha strike under Solaris 7 time scale of 2.5 seconds + simultaineous turns) it's an instant shutdown with damaging weapons. This is because you'd be generating the 63 heat out of 7.5 heat threshold and 12 cooling power in that 2.5 seconds. Pilot dies instantly. (Edit: Before commenting on this, please wait til you read the Solaris section near the end where I read off the rules and then deduce that if you divide all of Solaris's times 4 nonsense by 4, you get Battletech at 2.5 seconds.)

Now under Battletech, yes the build is fine. You'd have 19 heat left over after firing your weapons.
If you mathematically broke down the shots over time for real time, you'd also not reach 30 threshold, though depending on how you fire them you could get close. Bit of patience would be needed on the user's side. That's assuming front loaded lasers. Non-front loaded it'd be quite a bit easier.
But as I said, Laser vomit's about the only build style that's largely effective in tabletop.
In my statement earlier, I'm talking largely from the experience of building ballistic metas into tabletop (as should be evidenced by the kabooms), especially AC/2 builds but ballistic builds in general and some of PGI's made-up heroes.

Never really doubted that a laser vomit would work out. Did doubt the price though.

Now, MWO's price for the Atlas K is 13,691,066 cbills
Battletech's price is Cost: 22,576,000 C-bills.
Alright... what did they change in this update of Megamek it used to be 26m cbills, I know this because I've done a lot with that..
Dire Wolf was 32 mil in the Mek Lab.
Cost: 28,975,000 C-bills
God damn it. Megamek what did those guys do to you with this update?
Sarna posts the price at 29,250,000.
I know Megamek counts in the economy based on the year and established rates, but I'm in the lab outside of the game for building factory-produced models under construction rules rather than customized models under retrofitting rules so I shouldn't be seeing the economy flexing out here. What's it doing?
....Why the hell would they base the lab prices on the production year?
Ok... it kinda makes sense.. but damn I wish they'd stop changing ****. Also Atlas K shouldn't have changed, its production year was 3052...
What the hell did they base it on before that? ....Screw it, whatever. Now I got a lot of excel sheets to go through and 'update'. Dipsticks.
Meh.

My point still stands though. 29 or 28 mil on the Dire Wolf.
Then MWO's version is 17,785,963 mil.
The heavier you go, the more expensive it gets in tabletop when you're sporting XL or LFE.
In general though this is true even with standard engines, because engine prices differ per mech weight. A 300 engine for a 35 ton light is a LOT cheaper than in MWO. But one of that rating in XL format for an assault mech is, as I said, about 12 million.

Within universe the price flexes a bit but I've seen prices as low as 9 million and as high as 17 million. But as far as the 22 million Atlas K, if you switch the factory production from an XL 300 to a standard 300, the price becomes "Cost: 10,576,000 C-bills" That's roughly 12 million. Actually that's exactly 12 million.

Spoiler

Atlas AS7-K
IS TW non-box set
100 tons
BV: 2,374
Cost: 10,576,000 C-bills
Source: TRO 3050 - Clan Invasion
Movement: 3/5
Engine: 300
Heat Sinks: 20
Gyro: Standard Gyro
Internal: 152
Armor: 304/307

Atlas AS7-K
IS TW non-box set
100 tons
BV: 2,175
Cost: 22,576,000 C-bills
Source: TRO 3050 - Clan Invasion
Movement: 3/5
Engine: 300 XL
Heat Sinks: 20
Gyro: Standard Gyro
Internal: 152
Armor: 304/307

Why the hell does the battle value drop? Screw it, don't care..

Anyway... I made that point at least. But yes, the other point I had made previously was that many builds going from MWO to BT are badly oversinked for little to no reason as you've also agreed. Laser meta's an obvious exception. In their case, yes they are quite undercooled because the threshold is so limited. You'd never really pull that off in the way we can in MWO if not for MWO's thresholds. In fact to really reflect MWO, I'd have to use the 50 extended threshold (made especially for breaking the game!) or an artificial threshold and combine 3 turns of firing with 1 turn's cooling. Then we'd get something MWO-esque. But for this bit of fun I'd be using both full Battletech rules and Solaris rules in terms of time slices.

Side note, trying to confirm the heat threshold for Solaris using google, I discovered that Solaris VII is "founded" in 3079....
What the ****? Sarna.net, go home you're drunk. How do two generations of Allards fight in Solaris's arena if it isn't founded until 3079?

Time to dig out the Solaris book. Oh cool. A motel list per city on Solaris VII.
Lol, a Mad Dog in Virdian Bog (or a lookalike area)

Well its table of contents lies. "43" mech duel rules.
Get to page 43 (listed as page 43 on the paper itself) and I'm looking at hotel points of interest which the contents says should be page 37.


Okay so I realized I had the player's book not the game master's book (why list it under the player's book if it isn't there? That's gotta be a mistake of some sort.)

Alright so far the things I heard are true. Time slice 2.5 seconds. Roughly 25 feet (7.5 meters) per hex.
TICs -- so that's where it came from.. Without it, a mech can only fire one weapon at a time per turn.
Wonder if the AI's gonna be able to handle this, as the intention was to let the AI fight the AI for a completely unbiased setup..
Okay so I was told that you basically take BT's 30 threshold and divide by 4 to get Solaris VII's threshold under the 2.5 system. Here, it actually says you multiply the weapon's heat by 4 instead.
....That's effectively the same thing.

But on the same page I also see the heat table is 120 threshold (which if we divide that by 4 in addition to weapons, that basically means the threshold is still effectively 30 with a 1x heat scale on weapons). Wow, what a way to really contrive an otherwise simple system. Still at given time you've got 4x weapon heat and 4x threshold in a 2.5 second time slice, but if you reduce both to 1x you still have 30 threshold but 2.5 seconds of cooling power... Ah, I see why. 4 times heat, 4 times threshold, because they just went with your Battletech cooling per turn, which would then be 4 times faster than Battletech just to avoid making you do some basic division.

Why not have just done 1-1-1 scale with division?
Okay so effectively the heat doesn't actually change. They just times the whole setup (for the most part) by 4 to avoid making players use division (oh gawd no not math!).

So the summary I got of just divide by 4 does work. Was worried about misinformation.
Anyway looking forward to this.
So energy meta is gonna be fairly comparable in BT. Just gotta not fire all at the same time and instead over time. That's where the other guys will start to rise out of the ashes, but the ballistic and missile boats are really gonna suffer in the translation back to BT as I was saying before..

Edited by Koniving, 24 February 2018 - 08:22 AM.

[Metus regem]

As for units I play in both games, it's a short list...

Timber Wolf Delta
Warhammer 6R
Bushwacker X2

Now in MWO my Warhammer and bushy super stock builds.

[Koniving]

As for Silent's stuff...

One MWO build I made that I do field in BT is a modified Blackjack 1.
XL 180 engine. Twin UAC/5s. In the translation I trade some of the excess ammo for twin pairs of small pulse lasers on the side torsos (part of that tonnage came from bringing the armor back down to a more canonical amount). Later on over the course of a campaign I traded the SPLs and another ton of ammo for a pair of large shields mounted to the mech's front side torsos, which effectively bring the mech's armor up to a similar amount to that of MWO (after you divide the MWO amount by 2 to fit BT).

Based originally on this build.

(there's a bit of time that's particularly funny, standing next to an unaware enemy and shooting his allies briefly.)

(That Hellbringer in Solaris with the Solaris stuff..)

Spoiler

252 heat generated from a single firing.
Against 120 threshold.
With 48 cooling..
204 heat on the alpha strike after the cooling.

I'd say that's a dead pilot. Though in testing the pilot doesn't die.

Divide by 4 for Battletech in a 2.5 second time slice.
63 heat gen.
30 threshold
12 cooling within 2.5 seconds.
51 heat generated on the alpha strike (after the cooling is applied).

Pilot didn't die... but damn he should.

Edited by Koniving, 24 February 2018 - 09:06 AM.

[Exilyth]

Stock builds like the AWS-8Q Awesome actually work in the TT, e.g. that Awesome variant runs cool with 3 PPCs.

Tbh, the construction rules in tabletop offer a lot more options regarding weapons, armour and equipment.
Some medium w/XXL engine, supercharger, triple strength myomers, meelee weapon in each arm could just run into the back of most MWO builds and (on a good roll) onehit them.

For people who never played TT, I'll give you the TL;DR: on how that build works:
XXL engines are even lighter than XL engines, but take up even more space and generate more heat. The supercharger is like MASC, increasing movemement speed. Engine heat and other heat sources (e.g. some torso mounted medium lasers) trigger the heat treshold on triple strength myomers, which doubles the damage of meelee attacks while active. The result is a fast machine that runs around like a light while punching like an assault.

Edited by Exilyth, 24 February 2018 - 03:50 PM.

[Metus regem]

Exiiyth, one of my favourite custom TT mechs is a CGR-4A1 Charger, 80t, 400 LFE, MASC, Supercharger (yes they stack), Endo and two melee weapons (Maces).... She's fast, up to 15 hex/turn movement and she hits like a truck....

Charge damage with full movement is a massive 112 damage in 5 point clusters... then comes the made attack....

[jss78]

As far as mixed vs. focused builds, I believe in tabletop opinions vary on how you should go. I like a good mixed 'mech like the Vindicator or Wolverine, but also love stuff like Hunchbacks and Victors which are strictly focused within 9 hexes.

But apart from that, MWO definitely encourages some 'mech building habits that wouldn't be advisable in tabletop.

Off the top of my head:

- running less than a full complement of JJ's
- less than full head armour (I regularly do this in MWO)
- I have lots of brawler builds which would be grossly oversinked in tabletop. They still overheat quite easily in MWO, especially on hot maps.
- at least for me, too much ammo. In tabletop, for example, I like to have about 12-16 salvos for my missiles (maybe less if it's a bracket build like Crusader). In MWO I tend to feel 25 salvos is a reasonable minimum.

[Zergling]

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 07:10 AM, said:

(built from the construction rules in the MekLab)

I recommend using Solaris Skunk Werks instead, which is what I am using.

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 07:10 AM, said:

Now technically this build is impossible because of armor (Omnimechs can't change armor amounts), but we're gonna ignore that...

They can, but it counts as a custom modification to an existing design or a new design.

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 07:10 AM, said:

However, the Hellbringer generates 63 heat out of 48. If you were to fire it all at the same time using the True Alpha Strike (the optional command, NOT the rulebook; can't believe they named a rulebook that).. (Basically, alpha strike under Solaris 7 time scale of 2.5 seconds + simultaineous turns) it's an instant shutdown with damaging weapons. This is because you'd be generating the 63 heat out of 7.5 heat threshold and 12 cooling power in that 2.5 seconds. Pilot dies instantly. (Edit: Before commenting on this, please wait til you read the Solaris section near the end where I read off the rules and then deduce that if you divide all of Solaris's times 4 nonsense by 4, you get Battletech at 2.5 seconds.)

Now under Battletech, yes the build is fine. You'd have 19 heat left over after firing your weapons.
If you mathematically broke down the shots over time for real time, you'd also not reach 30 threshold, though depending on how you fire them you could get close. Bit of patience would be needed on the user's side. That's assuming front loaded lasers. Non-front loaded it'd be quite a bit easier.
But as I said, Laser vomit's about the only build style that's largely effective in tabletop.
In my statement earlier, I'm talking largely from the experience of building ballistic metas into tabletop (as should be evidenced by the kabooms), especially AC/2 builds but ballistic builds in general and some of PGI's made-up heroes.

Never really doubted that a laser vomit would work out. Did doubt the price though.

I'm familar with Solaris 7 rules, but I practically never use them.

Under standard TT rules, the MWO Hellbringer build is undersinked because with both Heavy Large and ER Medium Lasers having 15 hex range, it would want to fire all weapons at once, but because it can't it is inefficient compared to a build that can.

Eg, to avoid heat buildup the MWO build would only fire on of its Heavy Large Lasers along with all five ER Mediums, for 45 heat generation vs 48 heat dissipation, and put out 51 damage per turn.

If I were designing that build for TT, I'd drop to a single Heavy Large and increase to six ER Mediums and 25 double heatsinks (and 2 tons left over for other stuff, like ECM or AMS).
That would result in 50 heat generation vs 50 heat dissipation, and put out 58 damage per turn.

But then, if I were designing a build to be powerful in TT, I wouldn't be using Heavy Large Lasers to begin with, because of their +1 to hit penalty.
If I wanted a laser vomit build with 15 hex range, I'd instead build it with 10x ER Medium Lasers, 26 double heatsinks and 1 ton left over.
That would give it 52 heat generation vs 52 heat dissipation, and 70 damage per turn, without the Heavy Laser +1 to hit penalty.

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 07:10 AM, said:

Now, MWO's price for the Atlas K is 13,691,066 cbills
Battletech's price is Cost: 22,576,000 C-bills.
Alright... what did they change in this update of Megamek it used to be 26m cbills, I know this because I've done a lot with that..
Dire Wolf was 32 mil in the Mek Lab.
Cost: 28,975,000 C-bills
God damn it. Megamek what did those guys do to you with this update?
Sarna posts the price at 29,250,000.
I know Megamek counts in the economy based on the year and established rates, but I'm in the lab outside of the game for building factory-produced models under construction rules rather than customized models under retrofitting rules so I shouldn't be seeing the economy flexing out here. What's it doing?
....Why the hell would they base the lab prices on the production year?
Ok... it kinda makes sense.. but damn I wish they'd stop changing ****. Also Atlas K shouldn't have changed, its production year was 3052...
What the hell did they base it on before that? ....Screw it, whatever. Now I got a lot of excel sheets to go through and 'update'. Dipsticks.
Meh.

Near as I can tell, they updated to use exactly calculated cbill costs, which is what SSW uses.

Koniving, on 24 February 2018 - 07:10 AM, said:

Why the hell does the battle value drop? Screw it, don't care..

It doesn't; stock Atlas K has a BV 2.0 of 2175. If the engine is changed for a standard 300 and 20 standard heatsinks for 10 doubles, it has a BV of 2374 (plus 0.5 tons to play with).

[Koniving]

Skunkwerks does not allow me to play the mech. It lets me build it to be pretty. I can also do that in Mech Factory and by technicality I can "Play" the mech there, too.

Spoiler

Changing the armor value on an Omnimech changes it from an Omnimech to a Battlemech, as it would no longer be compatible with a array of weaponry specifically designed for its pod space.

Far as the Atlas, the Atlas K's battle value dropped from just changing the engine from the XL to the standard. I didn't toy with the heatsinks because I was looking to see the exact cost of the XL engine. (Which actually 12 million is the cost of the XL engine - the cost of the standard engine, so it's actually more than 12 million for an XL 300 on a 100 ton assault mech).

Min/maxing Battletech is... just cheap. Unfortunately it is one of those things that does enable the "Clans are superior" beliefs that are out there.

But, far as the firing it all at once, yes you queue it all to fire across 10 seconds... but effectively it can't actually be fired at the same time. Solaris, which is basically Battletech scaled down, basically confirms this (between both the fact that you'd shut down even in the 2.5 second scale, and the TIC in which players must assign weapons to work together and there's a finite limit of how many can be set to fire at the same time. Combining weapons across firing arcs seems to restrict them significantly [I swear BT treats these weapons as if they're all on turrets] though apparently there's only a penalty to aiming if multiple streak launchers are tied together) There's the issue of weapons being down for a length of time... Actually really interesting is that Solaris lists how long weapons are supposed to be delayed before usable again... But I'll get back to that.

There's a custom Alpha Strike rule out there where you can fire everything at once and treat it as such without having to do individual hit rolls and scatter your shots like a Doom Blossom

and as such the weapons will instead go to approximately 3 hit locations (if you roll CT, it'd hit CT, LT, RT based on the location of the weapon with LT weapons going left and RT weapons going right, leg weapons going left or right, and arm weapons going for whatever the center torso weapons went for. If you rolled a right torso on he hit location, it'd go right to CT and left to right arm. Basically it lets you really focus your damage and its a "all or nothing" meaning they all hit or they all miss. Course if you roll the arm, then just like PGI's Clan ER PPC scripted spread, anything going to the side opposite of the body misses entirely.) Of course if the total heat matches the threshold limit (30 normal or 50 expanded) you automatically must shut down,and every accuracy penalty that is experienced must be done. If movement was performed, the alpha strike is performed at the end of the movement (and the cooling accumulated will not apply to your current strike), and if not having moved then obviously you did it at the start (and accumulated cooling applies after shutdown).

Basically though, you don't fire all at once.

But.. back to the cool ****..

Guess PGI does have the right idea on smaller weapons being ready to fire again sooner.. much to my dismay. Small and medium lasers, AC/5s, AC/10s, Ultra/5 and LBX/10 are ready to fire again after a 2.5 second (after the passing of 1 turn and the start of the turn after) delay from the firing turn. Medium pulse, large laser, AC/20, are all ready to fire after 5 seconds. (2 turns and able to fire on the third) after the firing turn. ER large laser, PPC, ER PPC, all ready to fire after 10 seconds from the firing turn. LRMs 5 seconds after, SRMs 2.5 seconds after, and finally AC/2 and AMS... have no delays.

So that's interesting.. Imagine how different MWO would be if we had those firing delays. Laser vomit would probably change a little bit. But a number of other weapon setups would change drastically, I would think.

With those firing delays, however, some mechs like Nova make no sense. I used to figure it'd be the whole turn to be able ready the laser again as that gave a reason to have so many lasers beyond simply being redundant as you could then fire each one as needed while the others are busy cooling off (as weapon heat beyond mech heat is a thing between cooling jackets, machine guns and in TROs being weapons that can overheat and jam, etc..). (That is without counting the multiple shot = rating theory as supplemented by provided power outputs being too weak even on a large laser to heat modern armor enough to do anything according to Karl Strieger's found laser drill calculator (god that thing is complex to work with), but 6 to 7 shots within 5 seconds of the first one would make a sizeable crater in steel armor, and that's for a large laser with a 0.1 second beam time, but in going up to 1 second continuous could actually have a weaker power output and do just as much damage, and lasers [before the pulse lasers existed in BT, as it was written during CityTech's time] were stated to [depending on the manufacturer] fire either high energy pulses at 0.1 to 0.2 second durations or continuous beams going up to 2 seconds in duration).

Unfortunately these recharge times on lasers conflict with the multi-shot theory too, since damage is still 1 to 1 in Solaris. I can only assume armor is also one to one.

TL;DR Can't fire all at once, but can alpha strike.
Solaris firing delays are interesting, but make the Nova Prime design pointless and conflict with the multi-shot = damage rating laser theory stemmed from 80s and early 90s lore and fluff.

[Leone]

Bombast, on 24 February 2018 - 04:12 AM, said:

That's a lie. DHS are probably one of the most destabilizing tech changes in Battletech - If you were only able to use one piece of Tech 2 equipment, you'd be a fool to choose anything besides DHS.

Neg. Triple strength myomers would be my choice every time. What's a little heat when it powers your mech?

Anyways, let's talk battlemechs. I actually rather enjoy my 2035 drop deck for FP, and Whilst the engines don't quite synch up, I've retooled my battlemaster, slapped on an SRM 6, an cleaned up the excessive ammo count. I offer the BLR-1G. Slow, short ranged, brutal. Or the MAD-3R Which had a 275 engine, but had to gear down to fit construction rules.

But yeah, you really hafta change the heatsinks and ammo count to translate. And the partial engine thing messes me up every time too. I suppose I could try and translate some of my non tier one stuff.

Edit: For instance, this SHD-5M deliberately downgeared in MWO to 'keep up' with quickplay pilots. Honestly.... I don't think doubles are even necessary in table top.

Or maybe something like this? RGH-2A, but that's one expensive engine with not much ammo. But it's one of the few that doesn't hurt as much to up engine rather'n down gear like I hafta do to fit most of my builds back to table top build considerations.

~Leone

Edited by Leone, 25 February 2018 - 06:27 PM.

[Zergling]

Koniving, on 25 February 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Skunkwerks does not allow me to play the mech. It lets me build it to be pretty. I can also do that in Mech Factory and by technicality I can "Play" the mech there, too.

You can export SSW designs to .mtf format, which is what Megamek uses.

Koniving, on 25 February 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Changing the armor value on an Omnimech changes it from an Omnimech to a Battlemech, as it would no longer be compatible with a array of weaponry specifically designed for its pod space.

It'd be a customised mech, requiring the use of the customisation rules, but it is allowed in the rules.
The alternative is to just call it a new design entirely.


Note that flaws in the BV system heavily overvalue most variants of the Hellbringer.

The first flaw is armor is undervalued (so the mech's BV isn't as low as it should be for such an underarmored design).
The second flaw is undersinked designs are overvalued.
Third flaw is that various pieces of miscellaneous equipment inflate BV even when they are useless (like ECM when opponent doesn't any systems it can interfere with, or AMS when opponent doesn't have any missile weapons).

The Hellbringer Prime has a ridiculously high BV of 2654 because it is hit by all 3 of those flaws, when it deserves a BV somewhere in the range of 1700 or less.
Most other Hellbringer variants are similarly overvalued in BV, meaning TT players that are aware of this usually don't actually bother with stock/non-customised Hellbringers in BV games (the Hellbringer B might be a maybe due to only having a BV of 1592)


Like, look at the Flashman FLS-8K, which only has a BV of 1779. It has 13.5 tons of armor, same 5/8 speed as the Hellbringer, 30 heat dissipation, triple standard large laser and quad medium laser.
While it does have the handicap of an Inner Sphere XL engine, I'm fairly confident that if that was thrown up against a Hellbringer Prime, it would come out on top most of the time.

Like, the Flashman can fire 2x Large and 4x Medium Lasers without heat buildup while running, producing a damage output of 36 per turn.
The Hellbringer Prime can only fire one ER PPC and two ER Medium Lasers while walking without building up heat, for a damage output of just 29 per turn.


Hell, the Flashman could drop one of its three Large Lasers, change the XL to a LFE, upgrade to Endo-Steel, change the rear firing Medium Laser to forward firing (giving it 5x Medium Laser to shoot forward), drop the Flamer and Anti-Missile System, add one more Double Heatsink, and finish with an extra half a ton of armor.

It would then have a BV of 1695, less than original design yet most likely superior. And it would most definitely wreck the Hellbringer Prime when built like that.


If I wanted a design comparable to the ER PPC + ER Medium build on the Hellbringer Prime, I could take a Clan 65 ton chassis, 5/8 movement with XL engine, endo-steel, 13 tons of standard armor, 2x ER PPC, 3x ER Medium Laser, 24 double heat sinks, producing a BV of 2532.
That design ends up being able to continuously fire its weapons (for 51 damage per turn), far more armor than the Hellbringer Prime, while still having having less BV!

Koniving, on 25 February 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Far as the Atlas, the Atlas K's battle value dropped from just changing the engine from the XL to the standard. I didn't toy with the heatsinks because I was looking to see the exact cost of the XL engine.

Then there's a bug with the mechlab program you are using, because changing from XL to standard with no other changes should definitely be causing an increase in BV.

Koniving, on 25 February 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Min/maxing Battletech is... just cheap. Unfortunately it is one of those things that does enable the "Clans are superior" beliefs that are out there.

Min/maxing is one of the reasons the Battle Value system was introduced, although it has only some effect at preventing it.
Typically, players that don't want min/maxing nforce 'stock canon designs/variants only' rules. Tournament rules strictly require this, and further prevent players from using each unique variant more than once in their force.

One of the things I like doing with TT is going through Technical Readouts and trying to improve all the designs in there, while still retaining their individual flavor.
It isn't strictly min/maxing, as I'm not creating designs from scratch, but it is definitely similar to what many players dislike.

Edited by Zergling, 26 February 2018 - 09:34 PM.