Wow, that is a lot of help, thank you all, people!
I played with NCT-PRIME for a while, and found out that it is not THAT bad, actually. I used it a while ago (like a year or so) with 5xERLL, 3xERLL+2xHLL and after that with 3xERLL+2xLPL, but all of these options were too weak to snipe from very far away because of laser damage splitting and were by far too weak to even consider to join close range combat. So i was torturing myself with it back then for like a 3 month and then i sold it and moved on. But now i bought it again, and decided to make it perfectly lore-accurate NCT-PRIME with 2xERPPC and 3xERLL, just to have in my mech bay.
And it acutally was better than other laser builds i tried, considering 600 - 1000 damage in a good match is not bad, which i am sure is not. It is not THAT hot, it heats up very quickly but cools down insanely quick, only Warhawk dissipate heat quickier, at least i didn't see any other mechs with so good heat dissipation. It have great range, without range nodes it's 850 range is almost perfect for most of the large maps, only something like Alpine Peaks will be too large for such range to be sufficient, but this map is rather rare. It's main downsides is horribly slow weapon cooldown speed and even more horrible hitboxes in the conjunction with even MORE horrible mech's top speed. The cooldown issue can be solved by enabling chainfire, it also makes Nove Can much less hot than firing all 2 PPCs or 3LLs at once. And the speed and hitboxes issue, despite being unsolvable, still basically not important when you have someone like Atlas or Annihilator to be the scary target which everybody want to kill ASAP.
Nova Cat turned out to be great sidekick for the big 'Mechs, while they suck all the damage into themselves NCT shoots everything down, preferably from as far away as possible, and when the big guys die he will hopefully be able to either shoot down damaged targets or at least get away and find next teammate to be used as a meat shiedl. In other words, like Clan Nova Cat intended, it's a second line support mech. And when it have somebody to support, and somebody to be the first line, Nova Cat becomes a big difference maker, because of good sustained fire he provides. At least this is how i play him, and i never dealt more damage with other mechs, even when my team is really good.
The reason why i kept the PPCs, aside from historical accuracy, is because lasers split their damage too much, and sometimes you really need some "hit or miss" weapon, and because i am not old enough to remember the time when Clan PPCs weren't nerfed, i find them a great addition for the mech. Chain firing them with lasers is actually a nice way to have at least 1 weapon ready to scare off somebody who tried to flank you, and for dealing damage reasons PPCs aren't that bad, at least when you are far away from your target.
The main problem with Nova Cat, as well as some other second line supports, i suppose, is that often your team is not good enough to rely on them to suck damage and be the scary first line mechs, so i found myself left alone in 9-3 losing game with other 2 mechs being some lights with ECM and Stealth armor very often. Relying on team to be good is too unreliable strategy, especially if you are the 70 ton heavy mech that can only run with 69 KPH. So when my team isn't good, so is my Nova Cat. And when my team actually can fight with the enemy long enough, i can deal up to 1183 damage (personal record
) and help them win the match.
At least this is how i feel this mech now, it have something common with Awesome, except AWS-9M can run up to 80 KPH and shoot 3 ERPPCs infinetely with extreme fire rate. And for some reason i saw A LOT of NCT-PRIMEs in the recent games, and it turned out they can support each other fairly well.
Anyway, thank you all for the help, very apreciated! I do understand that it is definately not even remotely most effective mech to play, but i just can't let myself drop PPCs or change it in other way, it's just too nostalgic for a MW4.
Edited by JumpingHunter, 12 July 2022 - 05:00 AM.
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