22 replies to this topic

[beniliusbob]

Any ideas? I can't get a grip on this variant. I have a hard time using all 4 weapon groups (arm, arm, torso laser and torso missiles) and I'm too obsessed with the 5N's triple AC2s...

[Mithos]

If you have a hard time, the obvious solution would be reducing number of weapons for bigger engine or bigger guns.

[Wrenchfarm]

I kept it simple and boated 4 LLAS, a 320 XL engine, and all the DHS I could cram in there after trimming some armour. Laugh at lack of imagination, but it can melt mechs in a heartbeat and speed away to the next target (or piece of cover).

[Tastian]

The 1C was originally my least favorite Dragon. I had a 300XL, 2 Large Lasers, 2 Med Lasers, and LRM 10 with lots of ammo. It was only somewhat effective but too hot and the LRM10 just wasn't that great against fast lights or any mech with AMS. Even then it did less damage then harsh insults. I almost sold it after I elited my three Dragons. On a whim, I decided to try a 4 Large Laser build. It is one of my favorite mechs now.

[Eisenhorne]

I'll echo the others...

Endo Steel, 19 Double Heatsinks
XL300 engine
4 Large Lasers
XL300 Engine

400/402 armor (-1 in each leg)

Optionally, you can do 18 DHS and subtract some armor for an AMS, if you want.

This is the lightest mech where a 4 LL build is viable, so if a drop weight limited mission is ever developed, this dragon will be more in demand.

[Vodrin Thales]

I prefer a more in your face build. 300XL, ES, 14DHS, LB-10X, SRM6, and 4ML's. I average 400 damage per match with spikes to 1100 on occasion (pug matches only for very high spikes), and I have recorded 6 kills on a number of occasions. Have to be very patient with this build though as it has no AMS and very little range. If you can make the enemy come to you, or go to them behind a line of brawlers it is extremely effective.

[malibu43]

Vodrin Thales, on 04 December 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

I prefer a more in your face build. 300XL, ES, 14DHS, LB-10X, SRM6, and 4ML's. I average 400 damage per match with spikes to 1100 on occasion (pug matches only for very high spikes), and I have recorded 6 kills on a number of occasions. Have to be very patient with this build though as it has no AMS and very little range. If you can make the enemy come to you, or go to them behind a line of brawlers it is extremely effective.

I just bought a 1C last night and am trying to figure out how I want it configured. Like the other poster, I've had a hard time with the energy hard points being split across an arm and the torso and then having them in the same weapons group. As a result, I end up with 4 weapons groups, but I only have 3 buttons on my mouse. How do you have your weapons groups set up?

Here is my current build:

ES (probably add DHS also, doesn't save any weight but helps heat efficiency)
300 std engine (can't afford to run an XL)
AC5
SRM4
LLAS (on left torso)
2MLAS (on left arm)

Right now I have the AC5 and LLAS groups together since they are both long range weapons. I can then chain fire the group. I've also thought about going with an AC2 and PPC combo, but that will get hot quickly.

If I can get the weapons group thing figured out, I'd like to try 2MLAS in place of the LLAS...

Edited by malibu43, 04 December 2012 - 09:20 AM.

[Derric Willhelm]

I have been running the following for the past few days and REALLY enjoy it. Topped 800 damage a few times and scored 3+ kills multiple games.

Dragon 1C
Engine: XL300
RA: Gauss with 4 tons of ammo
CT: Empty
LT: 2 Medium Pulse Lasers
LA: 2 Medium Lasers
AMS: Yes
Upgrades: DHS, Endo
DHS: 3 (2 in engine)
Armor drop to fit: Legs - think I am at 29 or so. I have been legged once in about 100+ games with the Dragon.

81 kph with a arm actuated Gauss. I start most games sniping with the gauss waiting for the other team to move in. Sometimes I get counter sniped and I have to play more hide and seek but for the most part I get a lot of free rein at around 900 to 1500 meters. Make sure you have some good cover and align yourself to back pedal out of view. Missile boats will rain down on you at sniping ranges if they can so use objects to block the missiles.

When the fight gets close you have arm mediums out to 400 and your speed. Always keep moving forcing a arm based fight which the dragon wins. The pick your gauss shots for most damage - find the weak spots! If you can find someone distracted or over heated, line the chest up and spam the pulse lasers inside 270. Even some close range fights you can get the pulses in on since the dragon's CT moves so much.

Only things that give me trouble are Streak-cats (fixed today) and brawler atlas's. Generally I will evade those as best I can to get range and snipe with the gauss to soften them up before being forced back into close range.

TIP: Turn your torso when missiles are coming in. This will make your shoulders/arm take some of the missiles and save your CT.

[Mavairo]

Dragon 1C
XL360 Engine
2 Large Lasers Mount these in the Arm. (so you get full aiming articulation, this is very important!)
2 Medium Lasers
1 SRM6. 1 or 2 tons of ammo.
Full armor.
Endo Steel and double sinks all the way after that. Stuff as many Double Sinks as you can into the engine

Top speed with Speed Tweak is 105 kph.
I can run rings around any other heavy mech in the game, and in turn cut them to pieces. I can also in a pinch Scout, or more regularly play backup for the scouts.
As always treat this dragon as a Calvary mech. It's always moving, always striking, never stationary and tanking. Pick your entry and exit vectors, and plot your course so that you can hit as many targets as possible, (or come back to ambush the primary) on your lightning raids. Get in, alpha specific armor facings, hit someone else, and someone else and zip out. When the fight becomes slanted in your teams favor, you can come around without leaving the furball and start committing surgery to your targets aft sections, legs or what have you.

Always have an Exit Strategy in a dragon. The XL360 makes this incredibly easy to to have going for you as you can simply just raw horse power your way out of a furball if need be.

Use your ballistic arm to shield your ST, and Energy Arm, first.

Edited by Mavairo, 04 December 2012 - 09:39 AM.

[beniliusbob]

malibu43, on 04 December 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:

I just bought a 1C last night and am trying to figure out how I want it configured. Like the other poster, I've had a hard time with the energy hard points being split across an arm and the torso and then having them in the same weapons group. As a result, I end up with 4 weapons groups, but I only have 3 buttons on my mouse. How do you have your weapons groups set up?

Here is my current build:

ES (probably add DHS also, doesn't save any weight but helps heat efficiency)
300 std engine (can't afford to run an XL)
AC5
SRM4
LLAS (on left torso)
2MLAS (on left arm)

Right now I have the AC5 and LLAS groups together since they are both long range weapons. I can then chain fire the group. I've also thought about going with an AC2 and PPC combo, but that will get hot quickly.

If I can get the weapons group thing figured out, I'd like to try 2MLAS in place of the LLAS...

Hi malibu,

Hey, we played together on TS the other night...

I use Mouse 1, Mouse 2, E, and Q as my fire groups. However, I find that with 4 fire groups, I always forget to use one (usually whatever is bound to Q).

I would suggest NOT grouping the AC and the Large Lasers - the weapons function far too differently. That's just me, though.

Does anyone fire the torso missiles and torso lasers together? That's what I'd LIKE to do, because I am obsessed with filling all hard points and I only want 3 groups, but I don't know if the tracking will work out. Lasers and missiles have the same problem as lasers and ballistics.

[Vodrin Thales]

malibu43, on 04 December 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:

I just bought a 1C last night and am trying to figure out how I want it configured. Like the other poster, I've had a hard time with the energy hard points being split across an arm and the torso and then having them in the same weapons group. As a result, I end up with 4 weapons groups, but I only have 3 buttons on my mouse. How do you have your weapons groups set up?

Here is my current build:

ES (probably add DHS also, doesn't save any weight but helps heat efficiency)
300 std engine (can't afford to run an XL)
AC5
SRM4
LLAS (on left torso)
2MLAS (on left arm)

Right now I have the AC5 and LLAS groups together since they are both long range weapons. I can then chain fire the group. I've also thought about going with an AC2 and PPC combo, but that will get hot quickly.

If I can get the weapons group thing figured out, I'd like to try 2MLAS in place of the LLAS...

For my build I have group 1 with the 4 ML's, group 2 with the LB-10X and SRM, group 3 with LB-10X only, and group 6 (more accessible than 4-5 with my current key setups on my G13 gamepad) is the two arm lasers. This lets me efficiently hit with all my weapons when they can best be brought to bare on the target.

[Carrioncrows]

Right now I am running (And I love it to death)

PPC
AC10 x2 tons ammo
X2 med Lasers
Endo
13 DHS
XL 325 - 87 kph
Full Armor torso, arms and just a .5 tons or so shy on the legs.

The PPC and AC10 work together fantastically allowing you to core most mechs rear armor in a single salvo. They also make great skirmisher weapons as you dance among the buildings taking shots at target.

Because you are a striker you do not do fantastic against light mechs, sure you have the speed but only the ML's are really reliable against lights. So your job (should you choose to accept it) is to stick to Med / Heavy / Assault killing.

Also you could drop the XL325 down to a XL300, drop a DHS and put in a SRM6 in the CT for further Punch which isn't a bad idea.

I like the 13 DHS's because I tend to use all my weaponry but the 12 DHS's and the loss of 7kph isn't a big deal for the SRM6.

Edited by Carrioncrows, 04 December 2012 - 09:40 AM.

[Grisnir]

my Mini Atlas

Engine: 300 XL
Endo
16 DHS
4 Medium Laser
1 SRM6 with 1 ton of ammo
ac 10 with 3 tons of ammo

[grayson marik]

1 ac2
4 med pulse
300 engine ( standard)

[3rdworld]

What I use, you can more or less shoot the lasers on CD without worrying about heat.

[malibu43]

beniliusbob, on 04 December 2012 - 09:37 AM, said:

Hi malibu, Hey, we played together on TS the other night... I use Mouse 1, Mouse 2, E, and Q as my fire groups. However, I find that with 4 fire groups, I always forget to use one (usually whatever is bound to Q). I would suggest NOT grouping the AC and the Large Lasers - the weapons function far too differently. That's just me, though. Does anyone fire the torso missiles and torso lasers together? That's what I'd LIKE to do, because I am obsessed with filling all hard points and I only want 3 groups, but I don't know if the tracking will work out. Lasers and missiles have the same problem as lasers and ballistics.

Cool. What was your TS name?

I tried 1xSRM6 and 2xSLAS in the torso. It wasn't too bad, but there were times when I needed to lead with the SRM's and so the lasers missed. And there was a couple of times my heat was high and I just wanted to fire my SRMs, but I overheated myself because the SLAS fired too.

I have mouse button 1 still set to the default "Selected Weapon Group" which is usually group 1. So, another option would be to set the SLAS as an unused group (5 or 6 or something) and then select that as the weapons group if your arm with MLAS gets blown off. The disadvantage there is that you won't be maximizing your fire power until you lose an arm. But maybe that makes sense for heat reasons...

[Ryebear]

generally L-Mouse Button is Left Arm, R-Mouse Button is Right Arm, Middle mouse button is Torso, L-Shift is Weapon group 4 (usually missles).

If I have no weapons on an arm I will upgrade the middle mouse button to left or right button. But mapping the buttons to the arms helps shoot around corners instead of *at* corners.

4 LL build with 300XL is my version, tonnes of fun, great mid range fire support and very very good at targeting weak areas. Be far enough away to not be a primary target and be stationary or slow moving perpendicular to the fight to you stay approx the same distance away. Only swoop in if you need to circle around to an exposed back, and be quick to run away. This is easily my most effective mech. I use other variants more classically (heavy ballistic right arm, lasers and missles where they belong).

[malibu43]

Ryebear, on 04 December 2012 - 11:10 AM, said:

generally L-Mouse Button is Left Arm, R-Mouse Button is Right Arm, Middle mouse button is Torso, L-Shift is Weapon group 4 (usually missles). If I have no weapons on an arm I will upgrade the middle mouse button to left or right button. But mapping the buttons to the arms helps shoot around corners instead of *at* corners. 4 LL build with 300XL is my version, tonnes of fun, great mid range fire support and very very good at targeting weak areas. Be far enough away to not be a primary target and be stationary or slow moving perpendicular to the fight to you stay approx the same distance away. Only swoop in if you need to circle around to an exposed back, and be quick to run away. This is easily my most effective mech. I use other variants more classically (heavy ballistic right arm, lasers and missles where they belong).

Good idea on R-Shift. That's currently my PTT button for TS, but I can figure something else out for that.

[Smugsie]

I went back to the drawing board, the DRG 1C is the first mech I've purchased, and it still sits in my garage until today with 271,885 xp and a nice tiger paint job. I've went for 4ML + Gauss, AC/10 + 3ML + 1LL, but alas. These are slow mechs and always required my mech to be perpendicular to the enemy. Was this bad? Yes, because as a dragon pilot, the center torso is attractive to EVERYONE.
I've tried standard engines, they are way too slow and double heatsink accomodation was a problem for me.

I've tried Mavairo's build, I love speed, but again I missed the power from my 4ML + gauss builds.

Ferro Fibrous
Endo-Steal
XL 330 (3 Double Heatsinks)
LBX-AC10 (30 munitions in CT, 15 munitions in the head) (LBX-10 on the Right Arm)
2 Large Lasers (On the Left Arm)
98Kph with speed tweak

As always, I find the dragon to be a support brawler, it never was made to be upfront and personal like the atlas or hunchback through my eyes. The focus of this build is flexibility and the ease of using it. Sure one arm gets blown off, but never two. My gigantic center torso is able to shield my remaining arm. It packs 3 heavy weapons that is cooled with 1.53 heat efficiency, at the end of the round my damage ranges from 300-600. Sometimes less than 200 if I get carried away in the beginning of the match and go LNW.
Running away while shooting 145 degrees from the center is truly a fun experience

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...794c73b98f7c779

Edited by Necrok3, 11 July 2013 - 08:03 PM.

[Orzorn]

Endo, DHS, ferro
XL 360
4 DHS (stored in engine)
1 ERPPC, 2 PPC
Strip all armor from right arm
Shave armor from the head and legs, max armor on torso and left arm.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...6dcede7f24890ef