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I am putting this guide up as a service to new players who might be tempted to buy a big mech or even a hero mech. Hooooold up and consider piloting a light, as the current state of the game meta heavily favors these:
I call my and other Raven 3Ls the Craven 3L because the current state of the game reflects it well: (http://www.thefreedi...nary.com/craven craven [ˈkreɪvən] adj cowardly; mean-spirited )
I am very much of the opinion that ECM does too many good things to the carrier, and Craven swarms are the consequence of the more broken abilities of ECM, such as hard countering SSRMs and LRMS. Had it been implemented as a sensible soft counter by making locks slower we wouldn't be in this situation but here we are.
Until ECM ceases to be the swiss army shotgun of electronic warfare I highly encourage everyone to get in a Craven 3L and ride the snake. Here's my recommended Craven 3L loadout:
1) Engine, XL295 - You want to move fast since that makes you damn hard to hit. PGI are still advertising for a lead network programmer so lag shields will probably be strong for a few months to come yet. If ECMs didn't monkey hammer guided missiles this wouldn't be a problem, but for now it's a very strong defense.
2) ECM - you need to keep the enemy guided missiles off of you since they are the only weapon that will reliably damage you, that effect alone makes the 1.5 tons worth it, but ECM will do so much more in team fights. It is a force multiplier for the side that has more of them and a force divider against the side with less, so for this reason more is always better!
3) 2x Streak SRM2s - you have ECM so you get to use these while you're opponents don't. You might have to travel in a wolfpack with 2-3ECM to ensure you have superiority but don't worry, since ECM is a hard counter the team with N+1 will always have all of the advantages and none of the drawbacks - another brilliant hard counter, like the missile locks above.
4) 3x medium lasers - these are your primary damage source for dealing with any big dumb targets (aka non-cicada mediums,heavies,assaults). Thanks to role warfare assault mechs are not unstoppable battle fortresses, but instead they are the dopey fat kid in the class to be towel whipped at every opportunity - the Craven is simply nature's towel bearer.
5) 12x double heatsinks - more would be better as shutting down is a death sentence* (unless you have ECM superiority in the area, then they probably won't notice, or won't know for sure you are an enemy raven and often don't shoot you! LEWL...)
6) Endo steel is necessary to fit everything in
7) Take 2x tons of SSRM2 ammo placing them in the foot and in the head. If those locations are taking internal damage you have bigger problems anyway.
8) Place the ECM and the DHS that doesn't fit in the engine into the right or left torso. The DHS is there in case you take internal damage, so the criticals won't take out the ECM immediately. Another option is the foot that doesn't contain ammo, as losing a leg is fatal anyway.
9) Ferro-Fibrous is by all accounts pretty weak, but here it is worth it. You can get your armor up to 232/238 points with the remaining tonnage! Allocate full armor everywhere except for the arms. Since you have an XL engine losing any torso is fatal, as is losing a leg. For this reason we sacrifice the arms. Additionally because the raven arm hitboxes are tiny they are very very rarely blown off before the torso.
I recommend the following fire groupings:
group 1: chain fire SSRM2's. Some people prefer group fire, but I actually prefer chain firing them since it allows you to do bombing runs on enemies that dramatically reduce their targeting accuracy: When you start to move into their field of view fire once, then as you pass their central axis fire again. One of the launchers is a NARC single tube, so it will fire one rocket then another. The point is to spread your fire out over your pass so that you maximize the duration of their disorientation and make hitting you even harder than it normally would be. Once you've mastered the missile strafe timing you can start to add lasers into the pass to fill gaps or to increase the duration/severity of their disorientation.
group2: Two arm mounted medium lasers group fired. These are your maneuverable pair of lasers so they are useful for light hunting as well as precision damage on the enemy.
group3: One torso mounted medium laser. This laser requires you to align your torso to the target so you need to practice using it effectively. Avoid the temptation to run straight at the enemy to line this up though, it's more of an opportunity based extra stab. Also your heat management should revolve around using or not using this 3rd laser. Once you have double basics unlocked you should be able to fire the streaks and 2x arm mounted lasers on a nearly continuous cycle, but the 3rd med las will still push you over the top.
Even without any pilot efficiencies unlocked you will be a killing machine. Getting the hang of locking streaks is tricky but it's worth it to practice, and remember to lead your target with your lasers. Your primary duty is to kill the enemy scouts, especially those with ECM! Once they are down you can proceed to dismantle the remainder of the enemy team.
EDIT 10) Modules:
Since the Craven 3L comes with 3 module slots stock, you can get a lot of extra utility here without having to grind Master level. It's a bit strange that the pinnacle of the XP chart is a half cup full of "meh" but that's a discussion for another thread. The modules that I find very effective in this build are as follows:
a) Target retention: This thing was announced as some sort of a fix to ECM hurting LRM mechs, despite the fact that it doesn't seem to do a darn thing against ECM. This must be like that announcement where they said founders should enjoy their XP bonus (founders don't get an XP bonus) or that the death's knell came with 4x MPL (it has 4x regular lasers) - just another case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. What the left hand should have said is that this module will help ECM+Streak mechs ruin face, as it makes your streak locks super tough to get out of. Take this module, and get it up to level 2 as soon as you can.
b ) Increased target range: This module now actually does help against enemy ECM, but if you are moving at 100 kph towards an enemy, while he is moving at you at 150kph, the extra amount of time where you can see him is boosted by a whopping 0.72 seconds.... at level 2. At level 1 it's only 0.43 seconds. Still a boost is a boost and against the rare non ECM mech standing out in the middle of nowhere (and not under an allied ECM bubble) you can see them much further away. This module has it's place, it just isn't a huge help against enemy ECM.
c) Increased cap speed: 15% of a small light mech is not much, but it helps.
d) 360 target retention: Useful in a fluid firefight, but unless you've suffered head trauma you can usually remember what you were shooting at before you turned left 3 times...
e) Other modules: Zoom is not useful for this build.
So what is the role of this build?:
Well, on paper you are a fast scout, but due the the netcode and ECM hard countering guided missiles you are a great deal more. Why? Well let's look at what is going on:
1) You're damn fast and maneuverable, this means you are hard to hit and can get to where you need to be in a hurry.
2) You've got decent firepower, but also your speed and agility lets you direct it very effectively - does that awesome have a bad left rear torso? well then run behind him....
3) If you have local ECM superiority (travel in a group N+1 is always better than N) you are extremely efficient at destroying enemy lights since your guided SSRMs will still cut through their lag shields. As long as you have ECM superiority you don't need to worry about theirs. On paper medium mechs are supposed to be predators of light mechs, but in practice lights are much better light counters.
4) You can serve as an excellent escort for your team - try to keep them all under the invisibility cloak as they advance so only an optimist with a TAG system will be able to get the occasional missile volley through. Cover still works though so LRMs usually aren't a problem unless your teammates are asleep. Similarly most maps are so choked with cover that direct fire weapons aren't a concern as you move up, as long as your team is smart/awake.
5) If you stick with your team during a firefight you are also the hub of the "electronics warfare" system. The ECM is the swiss army shotgun of EWAR, and by keeping local ECM superiority you can ensure that only your team will be able to avoid friendly fire, and to target the most damaged/vulnerable enemies.
6) If there's an enemy TAG on the field that the special needs mechs (assaults) on your team keep staring into and hurting their eyes, you can knock it out of the fight by getting within 180m of it. Another glorious hard counter. I'm not 100% sure but I think it even prevents the mech carrying the TAG from actually benefiting from it when they're in your bubble. This is a bit like having a fire extinguisher that bursts into flames if it gets within 10 feet of a fire....
Your'e not convinced?
Well I did some testing by dropping with a friend on skype - we counted up our ECMs and their ECMs and looked if there was a correlation between more ECMs and winning....
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__1709146
long story short, I can say with >99.999% confidence (statistical confidence, not hypberbole or feelings) that the team with more ECMs is more likely to be the winning team. I can also say with >97% confidence that the team with at least 1 more ECM than the enemy is at least 2x more likely to win. On paper this is horrifically imbalanced, to the point of questioning the results even though I was there and collected all of the data myself. I've asked Garth for some sample data taken at random so I can remove myself from the equation, but for the time being this is the only statistical study of ECM effects I am aware of, and it clearly shows that ECM is not just influencing the match, but deciding it in most cases.
Good luck and remember - I know this build is cheese, but as beta testers our job is to break the game, not to play by some sort of moral code and only use "fair" combinations. It's the devs job to make a fair and fun game and I believe they slipped up badly with ECM - now I pilot a Craven 3L to help highlight this. In the meantime, if you want to help focus the attention of the devs on this, please give this a read http://mwomercs.com/...96#entry1712396 and if you like the question please "like" it, as well as post in the ask the devs 30 thread politely to ask them to answer it
See you on the battlefield - hopefully in your shiny new death bird Craven 3L.
Edited by Tolkien, 08 February 2013 - 10:13 AM.
