33 replies to this topic

[Dragonporn]

As a reaction to some threads here in general forum, I'm trying to figure out, why would people ever run something like triple AMS. They say it's a support type of mech to help out your team, but unless you're sure you will be playing 90% on Polar, plus there will be always like 6-7 Lurm/ATM boats on enemy team, it's just pure and absolutely criminal waste of slots and tonnage, isn't it?

The only place where picking even one AMS whenever you can is a bottom of Tier 5 (still very arguable). From my personal experience across the tiers, I developed some rules as to when pick AMS (only one, never more) and on what mech:
1. If I have spare tonnage with slots and really NOTHING else to spend it on.
2. If I run Assault or very immobile Heavy to help myself mitigate some missile damage before I can get in cover, plus I have spare tonnage and slots for it, never a priority.
3. Avoid L-AMS if I have at least something that produces heat.

I never pick it for "help the team" reason, because it won't help anyone who can't utilize cover and caught out of position, and it will help people who can even less. AMS can mostly protect from LRM fire, much less from any other missiles, since Streaks, SRMs or MRM are usually too close to mitigate good portion of damage, and ATMs you can just dodge, twist or shield even in very slow Assault. While L-AMS is hilarious, especially triple one. Seeing some guys frying themselves and exploding while not even getting shot at is priceless.

On the other hand we have ECM. I still don't prioritize it over additional firepower, but it holds FAR MORE utility than any number of AMS ever could IMO. With maxed nodes, you get decent bubble, which can protect you well and your team from locks, delay detection, let you re-position or move less noticeably and break locks faster when you or your teammates breaks LOS with an enemy. Not to mention that two mechs with ECM jumping anyone with lock type missiles and BAP, completely jam him, and not only missiles but impair ability to get target info at all. With so many advantages (among stealth armor, which can be quite gimmicky) you still don't have to (and can't) "boat" ECM, no heat, no need for ammo, no downsides at all.

So when I see threads like: "Uh, look! Triple AMS Nova! All Lurmers run for your lives!" seems a bit strange, since there are several heavy boats, they can still break through triple AMS, if dude is standing in the open or somebody behind keeps locks at it, but with ECM, it's much easier to avoid sustain fire.

Edited by Dragonporn, 27 May 2018 - 05:36 AM.

[eminus]

to each their own

your view on the mech loadout might be optimal to you but could be disastrous to others

as for me I like triple AMS and even without lurmers around I make sure I contribute

[BTGbullseye]

I personally use 1 AMS at most, preferably LAMS, and I don't worry about rules concerning it... If it doesn't hinder me, I'll leave it on, if it does, I remove it.

[Variant1]

Bro i dont mean to be rude, but ecm is trash now. It got nerfed to now its only 70% radar ranged as opposed to the old buble that blocks out detection. So ams is way more useful with dealing lrms than the garbage ecm.

[Pain G0D]

Quote

They say it's a support type of mech to help out your team, but unless you're sure you will be playing 90% on Polar, plus there will be always like 6-7 Lurm/ATM boats on enemy team, it's just pure and absolutely criminal waste of slots and tonnage, isn't it?

If there is 6 - 7 Lurm boats on the enemy team , no triple AMS or 4 tons of AMS ammo will save anyones butt . Why choose between ecm and ams when the perfect answer is take both and maximize protection .

I could argue that whatever weapon you choose to mount is also a purely situational endeavor dependent on what map and what mechs are on the enemy team and skill level . So yes at times even your super cheesy build can be a criminal waste of time and tonnage. A player wanting to be an AMS boat has as much or little value as your chosen role . Depends on the situation .
I have a AMS boat locust . Its fun to try and catch em all . Is it more or less optimal than an extra laser gun ? Not sure .
I am pretty sure any 100 ton armless weapon of mass destruction is grateful that i chose to stand next to him when it rains .

I do agree about that laser ams being very very risky if you mount more than one but even so there is a disable ams button so you can manage it . I think one lams on a heavy or assault is quite okay.
Once again situational. Perhaps its the perfect answer for Polar highlands with 7 lurm boats on the enemy team.

Edited by Pain G0D, 27 May 2018 - 07:10 AM.

[Snowbluff]

Variant1, on 27 May 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

Bro i dont mean to be rude, but ecm is trash now. It got nerfed to now its only 70% radar ranged as opposed to the old buble that blocks out detection. So ams is way more useful with dealing lrms than the garbage ecm.

USE. THE. ENHANCED. ECM. SKILL.

It's not that hard guys. It has about the same effect as the old one. Plus, sensors is a good tree for Radar Derp.

[MrXanthios]

AMS is pretty devastating against ATMs, a well placed kit fox can easily take down an entire volley of atms, and especially when the game is in brawling phase that can be a game changer

[El Bandito]

Dragonporn, on 27 May 2018 - 05:23 AM, said:

and ATMs you can just dodge, twist or shield even in very slow Assault.

Nope. ATMs at optimum range will rip slow Assaults a new one before they can say "wheredidmyarmorgo". I mount AMS in FP mostly against ATMs, less so against LRMs.

[Samantha Rbnsn1990]

You mean you can predict what enemy mechs are carrying what weapons pre-emptively and select your mech to counter it? That's amazing.

[Dragonporn]

Let's be real, what are chances that enemy team will be consisted of lurms at about 40% for AMS heavy builds to be viable? Also let's account for a fact that some other teammates will have AMS or ECM. Unless it's Polar (when lurm-people will vote it en masse) which isn't so often in rotation by itself, while there are maps, along with recent Solaris city, which doesn't favor LRM heavy builds at all, and to be safe, people bring their missile boats less often (the tendency I see lately). And regarding Polar, I witnessed it more times than I can count on both sides:
Lurm heavy team gets to the point and waits for teammates to get locks for them, and when enemy team finds out that half of the opponents consists of lurmers, they bunch up under ECM bubble and just push forward hard. It usually ends up is something like 12/0 or 12/3 at best. Why would AMS be useful? With this, you wouldn't even spend 20% of your ammo, and up close LRMs can't damage either way.

My main points are not that protection against missiles is useless, but how to make it more efficient per mech variant. Thing that makes me wonder is that ANY Light or Med struggles heavily with tonnage, and when it brings out triple AMS with 3-4 tons of ammo, that means it barely has any weapons, sacrificed too much firepower or armor, especially if enemy team doesn't have too many lurms, or any at all. Thing is, additional laser or dakka has a potential to be useful in any match, while triple AMS is an overkill protection mainly against very niche weapon system you have already several counters for (including natural cover). Question is: why?

Personally I'm all for variety in QP, but considering we already have ECM, and some mechs will have capacity to carry AMS without gimping their loadouts too much, making whole mechs built around it doesn't seem very efficient IMO. Carrying ECM is helpful more often than not, because it doesn't only protect against missiles projectiles. But if you carry both, that's 2 more wasted nodes, you could spend elsewhere because maximizing both is pretty much mandatory.

Edited by Dragonporn, 27 May 2018 - 09:45 AM.

[El Bandito]

Dragonporn, on 27 May 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

Personally I'm all for variety in QP, but considering we already have ECM, and some mechs will have capacity to carry AMS without gimping their loadouts too much, making whole mechs built around it doesn't seem very efficient IMO. Carrying ECM is helpful more often than not, because it doesn't only protect against missiles projectiles.

ECM is also good at info denial, but it can be easily cancelled by PPCs, UAVs, NARCs, and Active Probes, first two are especially common in a QP match. AMS cannot be hard countered, in comparison. I know AMS is very situational, but so far I have not regretted bringing one in a match.

Edited by El Bandito, 27 May 2018 - 10:27 AM.

[Felbombling]

Given the choice, I'd lean towards an ECM Suite over an AMS or AMS package. Cannot ignore the situation where the ECM is not optimized in the skill tree, though, where an AMS can bridge the gap until the Sensor tree has seen some investment. Even a one ton allotment into a standard AMS and 1000 rounds for a brand new Heavy or Assault Mech can make a huge difference. If you want to improve your survivability, an AMS makes complete sense. The math is fairly simple.

Edited by Felbombling, 27 May 2018 - 12:41 PM.

[Erronius]

Dragonporn, on 27 May 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

Personally I'm all for variety in QP, but considering we already have ECM, and some mechs will have capacity to carry AMS without gimping their loadouts too much, making whole mechs built around it doesn't seem very efficient IMO. Carrying ECM is helpful more often than not, because it doesn't only protect against missiles projectiles. But if you carry both, that's 2 more wasted nodes, you could spend elsewhere because maximizing both is pretty much mandatory.

The triple AMS Nova still seems like it has enough tonnage to be viable. Maybe not at everything, but I was fooling around with builds the other day and it seems like you can still bring some decent energy builds so that you aren't totally gimped if your enemy has no LRMs. I've done multiple builds with different Kit Foxes and even with 3 AMS and ECM you can still build some decent midrange laser pokers.

The only mechs I wouldn't want AMS on are the 20t-30t lights. I've looked at the 4xAMS PIR, and all I can think of is a troll build to run up to missile builds and laugh...but it's probably better to just use standard builds to chew them apart quickly.

The real issue with the "you don't need AMS, just stand behind cover" argument is that while you can certainly do that in the moment, doing that for an extended period just leads to LURM fire pinning your team down behind cover. And we all know what happens when your team is static and doesn't push into the LURMers. It would be much better if every single mech that's quirked survival took at least one AMS with Overload, but oh well...

From my perspective, QP is such a roll of the dice that I still frequently have games where there is literally no AMS or ECM, and that's exactly where something like a Triple AMS + ECM Kit Fox comes into its own. It's insulation from those games where you end up on Polar Domination and just see multiple Lurmbows arcing in on your team. There are still nights in QP where all my games end up being heavy with LRMs, and since I can't control my teammates, can't force them to push, can't force them to chase down spotters, can't force them to take even a single AMS per mech...so I jump into a support mech, as that's really the only way to force the issue when you're solo dropping. And it's already frustrating when you lose multiple games in a row due to Matchmaker...at least this way you can help mitigate the missile issue to a small degree.

[LordNothing]

i usually dont carry ams unless im going for an iron dome build and then i do i overdo it. on tripple ams builds il run a lams with 2 ams so that i have a good initial anti-missile defence for the duration of the ammo, then can fall back on the lams for the endgame. il run a single lams on a low heat build if i have room. such builds usually wont be equipped with ams because all the prime ammo storage locations would have been used up, so lams works well. i never use 3 ams because of ammo issues, but 2 is usually ok and never more than one lams because lams is way too hot to boat (on the civil war pts i killed a lams boating kitfox by dumbfiring missiles over its head).

when crossing open areas im more worried about erlls and goose rifles than i ever am about missiles.

Edited by LordNothing, 27 May 2018 - 02:13 PM.

[Averen]

Not sure about AMS, I never used it because I just don't feel the need. Last time a bunch of my mechs fielded it was during a lurmageddon, which is a reaaaaaaaaaaaally long time ago.

However, my ECM mechs always got a higher degree of survivability in Pug games. Protects you from a few salvos in the opening long range battles, makes locks harder even if they can target you with lurms, and can be quite useful when flanking. Particuarly in pugs, it shifts attention away to other players. Not sure why people pretend BAP, UAV or PPCs are a hard counter - BAP is limited to 360m range, the powerful UAVs got obvious limitations and PPCs are rare and merely disable ECM for a short while. They only work if the enemy knows where you are, and either managed to shoot you or stands quite literally besides you.

And take the stupid sensor quirks!

Edited by Averen, 27 May 2018 - 02:31 PM.

[Spheroid]

The only mech where you choose AMS or ECM is the Kit Fox-C. All other situations will be dictated by the specific build requirements. In this regard your topic is somewhat hypothetical and not real world.

[BTGbullseye]

Spheroid, on 27 May 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:

The only mech where you choose AMS or ECM is the Kit Fox-C. All other situations will be dictated by the specific build requirements. In this regard your topic is somewhat hypothetical and not real world.

You can take both on that... And it's a good idea to.

[Kanil]

People bring triple AMS so they can tell themselves "I'm helping!" without having to do anything hard like shoot the other team or expose themselves.

I'm not sure why they'd bring it over ECM, but if I had to guess, you're more rewarded for AMS. You can see and hear the missiles get shot down as confirmation of your "I'm helping!" and at the end of the game you get some match score and C-Bills for it. There's no obvious "reward" for a missile that doesn't get launched due to not having a lock.

[Prototelis]

If you're doing it right in the KFX you leave yourself room for enough weapons to shew away the squirrels.

Thats where the money comes from. Supporting assaults through shorter more open paths is a side benefit.

[Lykaon]

Variant1, on 27 May 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

Bro i dont mean to be rude, but ecm is trash now. It got nerfed to now its only 70% radar ranged as opposed to the old buble that blocks out detection. So ams is way more useful with dealing lrms than the garbage ecm.

Actually you want to use both.

For team support the best AMS is one that is about 300m in front of the mech being targeted by LRMs/ATMs.

The reasoning is simple. AMS engages missiles that enter the AMS effect radious thus if missile volleys enter then travel through and finally exit the AMS radious the missiles have been exposed to the maximum effects of the AMS.

Mounting the ECM on the same chassis as the AMS further discourages the enemy from targeting the vanguard mech that has both ECM and AMS and makes other targets seem more vulnerable to missiles than they in fact are.

So if you are the type to pilot a Kitfox with triple AMS + ECM remember that the best place to be is about 200-300m ahead of your team mates that are being targeted by LRM/ATM carriers.But don't get killed doing it (obviously)