62 replies to this topic

[Horseman]

The patch window probably isn't just the patch alone but also server maintenance and/or additional backups.

JC Daxion, on 15 June 2021 - 07:37 PM, said:

But thank you for updating this aspect, it is basically confirmation that everything is going exactly as they said back in nov/dec with slight delays which happens in all development.

As someone who works in the software field... roadmaps are generally based on "the dates we believe we can deliver at if nothing goes wrong on the way".
Protip? Things tend to do go wrong in some way or another, and a one-month slip amounts to basically a rounding error.

Edited by Horseman, 15 June 2021 - 11:22 PM.

[w0qj]

The MWO homepage just confirmed that a revamped Polar Highlands map would be included in the upcoming MWO patch on/about June 22nd 2021 (Tuesday)! Thanks to justcallme ASH for the heads up!

www.mwomercs.com

Edited by w0qj, 17 June 2021 - 12:07 AM.

[Dogstar]

tomzah, on 16 June 2021 - 02:53 AM, said:

I just hope that if they change a lot of values on many mechs they will at least ship the patch with some global sale discount on mechs/equipemnt like last time so if I buy a mech to test it with full skill tree and not like it I will be able to sell it for more than a tiny fraction of it's purchase value.

It's always a mistake to sell a mech. You can never tell when something will go in/out of fashion and even mechs that are out of fashion are still useful. Don't listen to the 'only the top meta mechs are worth playing' hyperbole.

[justcallme A S H]

A number of stock builds are extremely competitive though?

And that's the thing with MWO and Lore, if everything was followed as a FPS the game would be completely broken.

[Wid1046]

justcallme A S H, on 18 June 2021 - 04:20 AM, said:

A number of stock builds are extremely competitive though?

And that's the thing with MWO and Lore, if everything was followed as a FPS the game would be completely broken.

Can you give some examples of extremely competitive stock builds? I can think of a few stock builds that are okay, but none that are great enough that I'd consider them extremely competitive.

[Y E O N N E]

Wid1046, on 18 June 2021 - 04:59 AM, said:

Can you give some examples of extremely competitive stock builds? I can think of a few stock builds that are okay, but none that are great enough that I'd consider them extremely competitive.

Supernova 1
Warhawk Prime.
Rifleman IIC
Mist Lynx G

...that's all I got. Everything else that immediately comes to mind is actually gimped in a way that would render them down to "okay".

[Gagis]

One of the Nova Cats also counts. It mixes ERLL and ERPPC but is otherwise very well optimized.

Some of the inner sphere laser boats and LRM boats might get close but maybe more just okay than properly good.

The board game has just a ridiculous disparity of power levels between mech designs, especially since so many mixed loadouts are bad by design to keep the power level of some spesific boxed game set low enough. The exceptions that have not been handicapped on purpose are just ridiculously powerful in contrast.

Edited by Gagis, 18 June 2021 - 05:31 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

Y E O N N E, on 18 June 2021 - 05:26 AM, said:

Supernova 1
Warhawk Prime.
Rifleman IIC
Mist Lynx G

Nova cat also as Gagis said.

If you then think all other mechs are stock there are definitely some others that come into strong favour stock v stock too. Things like Anni and LRMboats that come loaded up stock as noted already too. ERPPC Awesome too not bad.

You'd have a smaller pool, much smaller, of useable/viable mechs that would absolutely dunk on everything else.

Stockmode in 2018s mech useage this as well. If memory serves the mech variation across the tournament was the lowest spread of all the worlds.

[Horseman]

tomzah, on 18 June 2021 - 04:15 AM, said:

Also, while I agree it's unwise to sell mechs, mech-bays are more important for me since they cost real money and I would like to keep this account strictly free-to-play.

If you're not pissing away MC from events and instead saving it up, you'll find yourself with more mechbays than you'll know what to do with without spending a single red cent.

[Wid1046]

Y E O N N E, on 18 June 2021 - 05:26 AM, said:

Supernova 1
Warhawk Prime.
Rifleman IIC
Mist Lynx G

...that's all I got. Everything else that immediately comes to mind is actually gimped in a way that would render them down to "okay".

Thanks, the Rifleman and Supernova both look great stock. The Warhawk looks alright; the LRM10 and TC5 won't really hurt the build, so it should still be quite good. I don't agree with you on the Mist Lynx though since it only has 1 ton of ammo for 8 heavy machine guns. Switching the build to regular machine guns so that you can more than double the ammo is (in my opinion) required to make it a good build.

Gagis, on 18 June 2021 - 05:30 AM, said:

One of the Nova Cats also counts. It mixes ERLL and ERPPC but is otherwise very well optimized.

Some of the inner sphere laser boats and LRM boats might get close but maybe more just okay than properly good.

The board game has just a ridiculous disparity of power levels between mech designs, especially since so many mixed loadouts are bad by design to keep the power level of some spesific boxed game set low enough. The exceptions that have not been handicapped on purpose are just ridiculously powerful in contrast.

The stock Nova Cat Prime does look quite good.

[justcallme A S H]

Wid1046, on 18 June 2021 - 06:29 AM, said:

Mist Lynx though since it only has 1 ton of ammo for 8 heavy machine guns. Switching the build to regular machine guns so that you can more than double the ammo is (in my opinion) required to make it a good build.

Stock builds generally don't have anything to crit-pad.

AKA - Stalker, which will die regularly to ammo explosions as there is nothing to pad the ammo etc etc.

It would probably be fine.

[Bud Crue]

tomzah, on 18 June 2021 - 04:15 AM, said:

I've been called many things but never a meta-mech player. I despise them, partly because many of them have nothing to do with battletech and partly because I like to use lore-friendly realistic builds that aren't very competitive against them. On that note I'd like to thank the cauldron for dropping the nerf hammer on atm vapor eagle... those things were just omni-present... now do the same with IV4 and possibly AC2rifleman IIC so that my trash builds can have a little easier time on the battlefield. Yeah I know it's my fault and nobody is forcing me to use sub-par mechs but I can't help it... even in MW3 I played mixed loadouts in C6 games (all weapons allowed) when everybody else was boating. Also, while I agree it's unwise to sell mechs, mech-bays are more important for me since they cost real money and I would like to keep this account strictly free-to-play.

Stock IV-4 is pretty lore friendly since you are into that sort of thing. I mean the lore is that Quickdraws were supposed to be a replacement for the Rifleman, and here you have the only Quickdraw that comes with ACs. I can't imagine such a mech needing a nerf. Yes, this is a bit of a joke, but honestly if you want to play mixed load out mechs, it doesn't get much more mixed than a stock IV-4, and if you are playing it stock, it sure as heck doesn't need any nerfs.

[1453 R]

I've actually had very good fortune with a very nearly bone-stock Nova Cat-D, the 3xHLL / LB-10/X variation. I downgraded the TC5 by two tiers to fit an active probe and an additional heat sink, but otherwise I left the 'Mech completely alone, including armor distribution, and it's been one of my top-performing heavies.

Now admittedly, I'm a T5 monkey who does not Play At The Highest Levels so take that advice with a grain of salt, but what the NCT-D has taught me is that being able to burn off nearly sixty points of armor in under two seconds all the way out to very nearly 500 meters with only a few range nodes is real nice. As is having an LBX autocannon to fish for component destructs and crits while you're running too hot for a full HLL burn and/or just wanna remind someone that you do in fact see their noodle and they should probably kept it properly down. Max out heat handling with Operations and all the Heat Gen nodes in Firepower you can efficiently* grab and the NCT-D gets two full burns in comfortably on even the hottest maps and dissipates fast enough to keep up a respectable rate of fire everywhere.

Sure, ERML burnboats can deal higher alpha damage, but their range is generally shorter than the Nova Cat and they don't have anything to do while cooling off. That and frankly? There's just something satisfying about clicking the button and watching the next best thing to three laser AC/20s tell someone "Your face offends me. Allow me to censor it."

[Wid1046]

justcallme A S H, on 18 June 2021 - 04:20 AM, said:

A number of stock builds are extremely competitive though?

And that's the thing with MWO and Lore, if everything was followed as a FPS the game would be completely broken.

justcallme A S H, on 18 June 2021 - 06:33 AM, said:

Stock builds generally don't have anything to crit-pad.

AKA - Stalker, which will die regularly to ammo explosions as there is nothing to pad the ammo etc etc.

It would probably be fine.

I thought you were talking about stock builds being extremely competitive in normal play, not just against other stock builds. I at least would be more interested in stock builds that could actually do well in normal matches, which is why I thought the SNV-1, RFL-IIC, WHK-PRIME, and NCT-PRIME were interesting, but disagreed about the MLX-G.

[justcallme A S H]

I was.

Just highlighted that stock v stock opens more doors to that as well.

Anyway it's kinda getting well off topic.

[Wid1046]

1453 R, on 18 June 2021 - 06:44 AM, said:

I've actually had very good fortune with a very nearly bone-stock Nova Cat-D, the 3xHLL / LB-10/X variation. I downgraded the TC5 by two tiers to fit an active probe and an additional heat sink, but otherwise I left the 'Mech completely alone, including armor distribution, and it's been one of my top-performing heavies.

Now admittedly, I'm a T5 monkey who does not Play At The Highest Levels so take that advice with a grain of salt, but what the NCT-D has taught me is that being able to burn off nearly sixty points of armor in under two seconds all the way out to very nearly 500 meters with only a few range nodes is real nice. As is having an LBX autocannon to fish for component destructs and crits while you're running too hot for a full HLL burn and/or just wanna remind someone that you do in fact see their noodle and they should probably kept it properly down. Max out heat handling with Operations and all the Heat Gen nodes in Firepower you can efficiently* grab and the NCT-D gets two full burns in comfortably on even the hottest maps and dissipates fast enough to keep up a respectable rate of fire everywhere.

Sure, ERML burnboats can deal higher alpha damage, but their range is generally shorter than the Nova Cat and they don't have anything to do while cooling off. That and frankly? There's just something satisfying about clicking the button and watching the next best thing to three laser AC/20s tell someone "Your face offends me. Allow me to censor it."

Looking through the stock Nova Cat builds, it looks like most of them could actually do pretty well. The NCT-C only looks okay, and the stock Cobra Cat looks like garbage, but everything else looks pretty good.

Edit: yeah, I've led this into a very off-topic direction. This is interesting, but it would be best to create another thread if people are interested in discussing good stock mechs further.

Edited by Wid1046, 18 June 2021 - 07:00 AM.

[Storming Angel]

Stock TBC-C doesn't seem to bad either.

[Gagis]

Storming Angel, on 18 June 2021 - 08:59 AM, said:

Stock TBC-C doesn't seem to bad either.

It has one rapidly cycling projectile weapon that needs leading to hit a moving target, two lock-on weapons that require lock to hit a target, two slowly cycling long range hitscan weapons and one medium range hitscan weapon.

An absolute mess with minimal range synergy and no aim synergy nor cooldown synergy.

Mechs like that are less bad in tabletop since the tabletop game mechanics are more abstract so that aiming mechanics or cycle times do not matter at all and only synergies you need to worry about are heat production and overlapping range profiles. MWO has more depth and nuance like this.

Edited by Gagis, 18 June 2021 - 09:17 AM.

[Storming Angel]

Gagis, on 18 June 2021 - 09:17 AM, said:

It has one rapidly cycling projectile weapon that needs leading to hit a moving target, two lock-on weapons that require lock to hit a target, two slowly cycling long range hitscan weapons and one medium range hitscan weapon.

An absolute mess with minimal range synergy and no aim synergy nor cooldown synergy.

Mechs like that are less bad in tabletop since the tabletop game mechanics are more abstract so that aiming mechanics or cycle times do not matter at all and only synergies you need to worry about are heat production and overlapping range profiles. MWO has more depth and nuance like this.

I meant the one you got from the event, i can't remember if it was a C or a prime now. It only had lasers.

[1453 R]

The champion Timberpuppy-C is a highly, highly custom fit thatonly uses two-ish, I think of the original Charlie omnipods.

The stock Charlie is two cERLL, one cUAC/5, two cLRM-15, and one cERML, alongside a solid AMS. Meta players would hate it, yeah, but in terms of mixed-loadout 'Mechs, there's worse options. Burn the cERLL, then switching to the Quack-5 to keep up the pressure until you need the lasers again. Use LRMs to throw out some damage at a distance (though ammo is super scarce), and add the cERML in close range as a desperation measure. It's not ideal by any means, but there's far worse ways to do mixed 'Mechs.