17 replies to this topic

[Dead Fury]

This is my reply to the thread dubbed "The Official Cat A1 Tutorial" located here

This is my first time making a Tutorial/build video and I did it in one run so I apologize in advance if its a bit hard to follow.

I call my build the Shredder because of how it just shreds components and armor off of enemies like they are cheese.

Build Video


Gameplay Video (Caustic Valley - perfect for showing the heat efficiency)

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What are your thoughts on my build/gameplay tactics?

Edited by Unstruck Fury, 17 December 2012 - 12:02 PM.

[Kaijin]

You never did click on that right ear, but if your build is symmetrical, then you're packing 12 tons of SRM ammo, not 7.

Point 2. You've got ammo spread all over that mech. The torsos are a good place for it - the arms not, as you cannot put C.A.S..E. into arms. To kill your mech, the enemy only need to rip an ear off, or get lucky and crit that 1 ton of ammo you have in it, which explodes, transferring damage into your side torso, blowing up the ammo there and killing your XL engine mech.

Edited by Kaijin, 17 December 2012 - 11:52 AM.

[Dead Fury]

Kaijin, on 17 December 2012 - 11:51 AM, said:

You never did click on that right ear, but if your build is symmetrical, then you're packing 12 tons of SRM ammo, not 7.

Point 2. You've got ammo spread all over that mech. The torsos are a good place for it - the arms not, as you cannot put C.A.S..E. into arms. To kill your mech, the enemy only need to rip an ear off, or get lucky and crit that 1 ton of ammo you have in it, which explodes, transferring damage into your side torso, blowing up the ammo there and killing your XL engine mech.

My understanding is that with an XL engine case does nothing, talked about it with a group of people in teamspeak the other day so I removed case and found that nothing changed. I have many times had both my ears taken off and never been killed that way. Every time I have ever been killed has been through the center torso, 1 or 2 times I have been cored from my right/left torsos.

I actually have 9 tons of SRM ammo, I dont know why I was saying 7 tons..

I did post a gameplay video on the original post.

Edited by Unstruck Fury, 17 December 2012 - 11:57 AM.

[Ghogiel]

There isn't much point to case with an XL. If the ammo explodes, all case is going to do is confine the damage to the side torso and stop it from transferring to your CT. But with an XL you'll be dead anyway if your side torso is blown out.

Edited by Ghogiel, 17 December 2012 - 12:02 PM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I'm moving this over to the BattleMech Guides section of the forums, since it is a Mech-Variant specific educational thread.

[One Medic Army]

Ammo with XL is actually safest in legs, head, and arms.
Hopefully the feed mechanism is smart and uses up the arm ammo first so a blown arm doesn't blow the adjacent side torso.

[Dead Fury]

Ghogiel, on 17 December 2012 - 12:01 PM, said:

There isn't much point to case with an XL. If the ammo explodes, all case is going to do is confine the damage to the side torso and stop it from transferring to your CT. But with an XL you'll be dead anyway if your side torso is blown out.

Thats exactly what I thought. Thanks, good to know I was correct.

Prosperity Park, on 17 December 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

I'm moving this over to the BattleMech Guides section of the forums, since it is a Mech-Variant specific educational thread.

Oh my bad.. thanks

One Medic Army, on 17 December 2012 - 12:05 PM, said:

Ammo with XL is actually safest in legs, head, and arms.
Hopefully the feed mechanism is smart and uses up the arm ammo first so a blown arm doesn't blow the adjacent side torso.

I believe it does, either that, or ammo explosions in the arm/ear do not transfer to the torso. Either way, I have yet to die by having an ear blown off so....

[Kaijin]

May have been mistaken, but I thought your build vid showed 3 tons of ammo in each side torso, 2 in each leg, and 1 in the left ear, for a grand total of 11 (12 if you have 1 ton in the right ear)

C.A.S.E. doesn't matter for mechs with XL engines unless there is a repair bill involved. There isn't one now, so C.A.S.E. is useless to you. But why put ammo in both side torsos? To my mind, that increases the chance you'll die to ammo explosion. If you put everything left over after you've filled your legs into one side torso only, you can protect that side and perhaps live a little longer if the going gets rough. And living a little longer can mean the difference between winning and losing.

You don't need 14 DHS. With an XL300, only 12 of them are doubled anyway. Stick with 12, and max your armor with those 2 tons. The SRM Cat is a Brawler, and as such, carrying anything less than full armor is ill-advised.

[One Medic Army]

I've had my arm gauss blown off and it damaged my torso internals, and gauss explosions are treated as ammo explosions, so I can confirm that ammo explosions carry over.

[Dead Fury]

Kaijin, on 17 December 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

May have been mistaken, but I thought your build vid showed 3 tons of ammo in each side torso, 2 in each leg, and 1 in the left ear, for a grand total of 11 (12 if you have 1 ton in the right ear)

C.A.S.E. doesn't matter for mechs with XL engines unless there is a repair bill involved. There isn't one now, so C.A.S.E. is useless to you. But why put ammo in both side torsos? To my mind, that increases the chance you'll die to ammo explosion. If you put everything left over after you've filled your legs into one side torso only, you can protect that side and perhaps live a little longer if the going gets rough. And living a little longer can mean the difference between winning and losing.

You don't need 14 DHS. With an XL300, only 12 of them are doubled anyway. Stick with 12, and max your armor with those 2 tons. The SRM Cat is a Brawler, and as such, carrying anything less than full armor is ill-advised.

I thought I mentioned in the video that I only put ammo in 1 side torso (because I had to) keeping the other one clean to reduce risk of an ammo explosion.

Anyways my ammo is laid out as soo..

1 ton in both ears (2 tons total)
3 tons in Left Torso (3 tons total)
2 tons in both legs (4 tons total)

leaving me with 9 tons of ammo.

I am not sure what you are talking about that I dont need the extra dhs. Yes you do, you very much do. I ran this build before with minus 2 heat sinks giving me a 1.21 (i think) heat efficiency which was bad, very bad especially on caustic. The armor is only reduced in the legs, people rarely fire at your legs so its a very good sacrifice to increase your heat efficiency.

The only armor I am missing is from the legs, which as I stated, rarely get shot at or blown off. I have played with this build in many ways and I can confirm with little doubt this is one of the best ways to build it from what i have seen.

[Selfish]

One Medic Army, on 17 December 2012 - 12:05 PM, said:

Ammo with XL is actually safest in legs, head, and arms.
Hopefully the feed mechanism is smart and uses up the arm ammo first so a blown arm doesn't blow the adjacent side torso.

The ALS system goes Head->CT->RT->LT->LA->RA->LL->RL. In this case, the arms are going to be the fourth and fifth ton of ammo that's drawn, so they'll be fairly vulnerable. One little perk they have is the missile bay door damage resistance, but I highly doubt an SRM cat would run with flaps closed. The legs are one of the most risky bets if you're holding large stores of ammo, since they'll store ammo the longest and have the potential for the most destructive chain of damage transfers. Still, they're a good bet. A lot of people don't pick on Catapult's legs because of how armored they can be, and how much more important it is to core/disarm them compared to other mechs.

[themoob]

Whoa, a SRM Catapult! Careful, we've got a creative genius over here.

[Kaijin]

Unstruck Fury, on 17 December 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

The only armor I am missing is from the legs, which as I stated, rarely get shot at or blown off. I have played with this build in many ways and I can confirm with little doubt this is one of the best ways to build it from what i have seen.

You've been lucky. Experienced opponents will throw a shot into a leg of an obviously ammo-dependent mech to check if it's been down-armored. You're only missing armor in your legs, so they're at 28 each. Crazy.

[Dead Fury]

themoob, on 17 December 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

Whoa, a SRM Catapult! Careful, we've got a creative genius over here.

Seriously, its people like you...

Kaijin, on 17 December 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

You've been lucky. Experienced opponents will throw a shot into a leg of an obviously ammo-dependent mech to check if it's been down-armored. You're only missing armor in your legs, so they're at 28 each. Crazy.

Understandable. However it rarely happens and I have only been legged once, and I still survived to the end. If it came down to it I could probably drop 1 ton of ammo and put some armor on my legs.

[p00k]

noticed you powered down against lrm's at the beginning. don't. once you break LOS, the missiles stop homing in anyways, but if you power down and haven't moved far enough away from when they lost their tracking, then they still fall on you as dumbfire. just keep moving and the lrm's will fall harmlessly on the ground

you're doing a disservice to yourself not putting jumpjets on it. especially since 1 jj still does the same as 5 right now. adds a ton of mobility, and lets you take advantage of arm mounted weapons against enemies that often carry their biggest weapons in the torsos

given the predominance of ecm, and the need to close in to reasonably close range, and the fact that ecm negates artemis's cluster bonus, it's sort of a waste. that tonnage is better spent on more dhs, more ammo, and more armor, and a jumpjet. for example, same engine, 15 total dhs, you can take 6 srm6's, 9 tons of ammo, but put all but 1 ton in the arms (4 in each arm, 1 in a leg), and take 416 armor to help prevent being legged or having your arms clipped. sure against mediocre competition you may not run up against as much ecm, and the artemis helps, but you don't really need it against inferior competition anyway given how cheesy this build can be.

[Dead Fury]

p00k, on 17 December 2012 - 10:25 PM, said:

noticed you powered down against lrm's at the beginning. don't. once you break LOS, the missiles stop homing in anyways, but if you power down and haven't moved far enough away from when they lost their tracking, then they still fall on you as dumbfire. just keep moving and the lrm's will fall harmlessly on the ground

you're doing a disservice to yourself not putting jumpjets on it. especially since 1 jj still does the same as 5 right now. adds a ton of mobility, and lets you take advantage of arm mounted weapons against enemies that often carry their biggest weapons in the torsos

given the predominance of ecm, and the need to close in to reasonably close range, and the fact that ecm negates artemis's cluster bonus, it's sort of a waste. that tonnage is better spent on more dhs, more ammo, and more armor, and a jumpjet. for example, same engine, 15 total dhs, you can take 6 srm6's, 9 tons of ammo, but put all but 1 ton in the arms (4 in each arm, 1 in a leg), and take 416 armor to help prevent being legged or having your arms clipped. sure against mediocre competition you may not run up against as much ecm, and the artemis helps, but you don't really need it against inferior competition anyway given how cheesy this build can be.

Artemis is a must, while it is true ECM does negate it. more often then not an ECM equipped mech is not nearby negating it. Even so, I test this before I put artemis on it and with artemis on I have cored mediums in 1 salvo, before the spread was so wide I would basically have to be touching them to do that. With artemis I can be at a good 100 meters and core a medium in 1 salvo. at 270 meters I can still do a good amount of damage, where without artemis at 270 meters ill be lucky if 25% of my missiles hit.

The reason I don't have 6 SRM6's and have the 2 SRM4's is precisely to increase my heat efficiency without requiring me to waste more slots of DHS, instead, I gain slots. In the end 32 missiles with good heat eff. + artemis is better than 36 missiles with mediocre heat eff.

I do agree with you that having 1 jump jet would be a good move currently, which I will probably swap out 1 ton of ammo to do that seeing as the majority of my matches end with me having between 3-4 tons left over.

However, armor wise I am keeping my armor how it is. The mech is maxed in armor everywhere but the legs, and with having played over 60 matches in this mech and only being legged once, i think it is a very good sacrifice.

[p00k]

Unstruck Fury, on 17 December 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

Artemis is a must, while it is true ECM does negate it. more often then not an ECM equipped mech is not nearby negating it. Even so, I test this before I put artemis on it and with artemis on I have cored mediums in 1 salvo, before the spread was so wide I would basically have to be touching them to do that. With artemis I can be at a good 100 meters and core a medium in 1 salvo. at 270 meters I can still do a good amount of damage, where without artemis at 270 meters ill be lucky if 25% of my missiles hit.

The reason I don't have 6 SRM6's and have the 2 SRM4's is precisely to increase my heat efficiency without requiring me to waste more slots of DHS, instead, I gain slots. In the end 32 missiles with good heat eff. + artemis is better than 36 missiles with mediocre heat eff.

I do agree with you that having 1 jump jet would be a good move currently, which I will probably swap out 1 ton of ammo to do that seeing as the majority of my matches end with me having between 3-4 tons left over.

However, armor wise I am keeping my armor how it is. The mech is maxed in armor everywhere but the legs, and with having played over 60 matches in this mech and only being legged once, i think it is a very good sacrifice.

as you said, artemis comes in handy when there's no ecm mechs around. but generally the only time that'll be the case is against pugs who you can crush just as easily without artemis, so there's really no need.

also, if you learn the convergence ranges for srm's, non-artemis srm6's actually match the spread of artemis ones at point blank range, spread out more after ~100m, but then converge back at ~150-200. controlling your engagement range allows you to get comparable clustering without artemis

actually it's the same heat efficiency, since removing artemis lets you take more heatsinks, you're not wasting more slots on dhs, you're wasting more slots on artemis.

and while you may not notice being legged much now, it's an unnecessary sacrifice, when you can max out head/torsos/arms and still take 57 in each leg.

most importantly, if you do add jumpjets, you'll start taking fall damage, sometimes even when you're burning jj for a soft landing. you'll want the extra armor

[Dead Fury]

p00k, on 17 December 2012 - 10:47 PM, said:

as you said, artemis comes in handy when there's no ecm mechs around. but generally the only time that'll be the case is against pugs who you can crush just as easily without artemis, so there's really no need.

also, if you learn the convergence ranges for srm's, non-artemis srm6's actually match the spread of artemis ones at point blank range, spread out more after ~100m, but then converge back at ~150-200. controlling your engagement range allows you to get comparable clustering without artemis

actually it's the same heat efficiency, since removing artemis lets you take more heatsinks, you're not wasting more slots on dhs, you're wasting more slots on artemis.

and while you may not notice being legged much now, it's an unnecessary sacrifice, when you can max out head/torsos/arms and still take 57 in each leg.

most importantly, if you do add jumpjets, you'll start taking fall damage, sometimes even when you're burning jj for a soft landing. you'll want the extra armor

On the topic of Artemis. Before I had artemis added I was running it with 6 SRM6's and more DHS (i didnt have the cbills for artemis for a while) which came out with about the same heat eff. that I have now. However, when I switched to Artemis and 2 SRM4's I notices a great deal in damage output and range variability.

All in all I found that overall I was doing much better with Artemis compared to not having it. It may seem like I would do better without it if you look at the numbers directly, however, when it comes to actually playing in a game I end up doing much better with Artemis than without.

I agree that what you are saying, logically speaking, you would expect to be the better build. But, from what I have noticed it is not.
_________

All I can really say is build an A1 cat and try it your way, then try it mine. Hell it might just be a difference in how we play.