36 replies to this topic

[Analytic D]

So I recently came back after a many updates absence doing the whole life thing for a bit, and I had a bit to reconsider after going through the patch notes. But there were two big things that stuck.

So, the AC/2 had its fire time cut to 0.5, which ups its DPS to 4. And now there is the Cataphract chassis, with the CTF-4X variant which has 4 ballistic hardpoints. So.......

......I instantly decided to build this 16 DPS mech.

After a bit of testing, I realized it was easy to overheat. All the extra weight of the AC/2's, at 6 a pop and another at least 4 in ammo, made it difficult to stack the heatsinks up without sacrificing armor to a ludicrous degree. But I did have an absurd amount of critical slots remaining.

Double heatsinks to the rescue!

This helped a good bit, but I was still conserving ammo a bit too much to use the guns to really terrify the enemy. When you start getting hit twice a second, rocking your view around, it kind of frazzles you, and you panic, and you start to make mistakes. This especially becomes true after the cool-as-a-cat, pro pilots who aren't so phased by the intimidation of rocking or the damage, notice that they are actually taking ALOT of damage. Either pilots are frazzled from the attack and rocking alone, or they are quickly frazzled by the thought "Oh &^%$, I need to get away from this guy's DPS or I'm done". Regardless, quad AC/2 has a way of throwing people off kilter.

So to really stack this psychology to my advantage, I had to have the ability to be relentless. If I had to pause in an attack to cool off, then I now appear vulnerable and not so intimidating. So no running out of ammo or overheating. This is a pretty tall order given the weight of the guns. For the weight of 4 AC/2's, you could have 4 medium lasers and 20 heatsinks, a package which would never overheat. But the DPS would only be 5 vs 16, and it would be delivered over time to numerous areas.

But what do we have in adundance on this 'Phract? Critical slots.

So on goes the Ferro-fibrous. I cut 20 armor each on the legs to gain an extra ton and threw on more ammo and more heatsinks.

Guess what? EVERY crit slot is filled now at a full 70 tons with 8 ammo stacks, a 210 standard with 8 double heatsinks plus another 8 added in for a grand total of 16 double heatsinks.

The very next game after I adjusted it to this configuration, I ran a match with ~680 damage, 5 kills, 1 assist, won handily, and even ran out of ammo.

It was really something else to come out the clear winner after staring down an Atlas from orange armored core and just having a slug fest.

It was neat to have my theory fit closely to the results. There is no other solid explanation for other players reactions to my attacks other than what I described. It rocks your screen madly and you realize you are taking a ton of damage. Proceed to spaz out and play poorly. Die.

The next step is to max out this chassis with an XL 255, which would provide 2 additional double heatsinks from the engine, but take 6 extra crit slots from being an XL, ultimately leaving the heatsinks the same, while giving an extra 45 power, pushing the speed up to 59 from 48 and greatly boosting the acceleration. Mind you, I don't even have the basic accel and decel boosts yet, so all of these things combined will make this Gattling mech a terrifying machine.

Try it out guys.


edit: In all my chart reading and maths-ing, I made a bad-bad, so I fixed it

Edited by Analytic D, 19 January 2013 - 09:40 PM.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

Analytic D, on 19 January 2013 - 09:28 PM, said:

The next step is to get an XL 260, which would provide 2 additional double heatsinks from the engine, but take 6 extra crit slots, leaving the heatsinks the same, while giving an extra 60 power, pushing the speed up to 60 from 48 and greatly boosting the acceleration. Mind you, I don't even have the basic accel and decel boosts yet, so all of these things combined will make this Gattling mech a terrifying machine.

The largest engine you can put in a Cataphract-4x is an XL255, which gives you the base 10 heat sinks.
Try it out guys.

Edited by mwhighlander, 19 January 2013 - 09:31 PM.

[Analytic D]

Fair enough, I made a mistake there. But the difference between the two in this case is having an extra 10 armor on each leg and having 59 max speed instead of 60.

Thanks for pointing that out. Also, I messed up the engine heatsinks of the 210. I said it was 6 when it is actually 8, for a total of 16 atm. Edits will be made.

[Warrax the Chaos Warrior]

4 AC5s are considerably more effective than 4 AC2s. You won't have heat issues (no extra sinks needed), and you can get a 20 point alpha instead of a paltry 8. DPS is neat and all, but alpha is more important most of the time.

You can still chain fire if you want to troll people with screen shake, but you will get more kills with alphas. There were a lot of AC2 boats in the game right after they got buffed that first time, but most people have stopped playing them because they honestly aren't as good in practice as they are in theory.

[Bagheera]

My 4X is on a semi-steady rotation between 4x2, 4x5, 2x10, and 2x Gauss builds. But I am a sucker for all things dakka.

[Warrax the Chaos Warrior]

Bagheera, on 19 January 2013 - 09:59 PM, said:

My 4X is on a semi-steady rotation between 4x2, 4x5, 2x10, and 2x Gauss builds. But I am a sucker for all things dakka.

I tried the 2x10; it was really nice, but the I liked the 2xGauss a lot better and the 4x5 is my favorite by far because of the nice balance between high damage and high rate-of-fire. I actually haven't tried the 4x2, I just know that whenever I see someone boating AC2s, I just pop in and out of cover alpha striking so their DPS means nothing.

[Analytic D]

Warrax the Chaos Warrior, on 19 January 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

4 AC5s are considerably more effective than 4 AC2s. You won't have heat issues (no extra sinks needed), and you can get a 20 point alpha instead of a paltry 8. DPS is neat and all, but alpha is more important most of the time.

You can still chain fire if you want to troll people with screen shake, but you will get more kills with alphas. There were a lot of AC2 boats in the game right after they got buffed that first time, but most people have stopped playing them because they honestly aren't as good in practice as they are in theory.

On the one hand, the smaller alpha means you don't hit as hard, but on the other, you also have over 3 times the ROF, so you don't have to. If you miss a salvo, you've only lost 8 damage, but with quad AC/5, you've lost 20. Missing a salvo puts pressure on you to make the next one, and that pressure doesn't increase your accuracy, it just stresses you out, decreasing your accuracy if anything. Also, you've got fewer shots to get tracer feedback from, so upon engaging a target, it will take longer to get a solid bead. Once you have landed a shot with the 5's, your target reacts to the severe impact and is going to change vector, meaning you have to adjust your next shot on the fly or miss. The accuracy by volume of the AC/2's cannot be ignored here if we are going to talk about practice "most of the time".

Also, I played the AC/5 build just before I had the realization about the maths of the AC/2's. What I described above does happen.

And don't discount how much it screws with the performance of your target when you are rocking them with screen shake every half second. I sure as hell can't keep my bead when my view is violently spazzing out from ballistics or missiles, so I've got a sneaking suspicion that I'm not the only one who get's disrupted by it. Hence, AC/2, having the highest ROF, would be the most annoying. And with a quad stack of them, not only are you annoying, but if you have sight of an enemy for even two seconds, which is not damn long in MWO, you can land at least 2 salvo's on them, for a total of 16 damage.

AND, don't forget that the AC/2 has the longest range in the game at 720m before very slowly dropping off to zero at 2160m, which is basically corner of map to corner of map. So 1km shots in the early game are easy to land, given the high ROF and tracer aspect of that. I bet I do 100 damage before any fighting even starts, and that isn't something to just discard.

The alpha is a good point to make, but I think the other aspects of the AC/2 ultimately outweigh it.

[Warrax the Chaos Warrior]

Analytic D, on 19 January 2013 - 10:14 PM, said:

_snip_

Okay, if you say so

You are roughly the ~9,647th person to "do the math" and come to the conclusion that AC2s are made of pure awesome. I'm not saying they're completely ineffective, but a lot of people have gone down that road and wound up switching to something that works better in practice than it does in theory.

You will have fun with them anyway, they do have the dakka

[Analytic D]

Warrax the Chaos Warrior, on 19 January 2013 - 10:05 PM, said:

I tried the 2x10; it was really nice, but the I liked the 2xGauss a lot better and the 4x5 is my favorite by far because of the nice balance between high damage and high rate-of-fire. I actually haven't tried the 4x2, I just know that whenever I see someone boating AC2s, I just pop in and out of cover alpha striking so their DPS means nothing.

Well then, you must be the guy who I give up on. Once my target is smart enough to grab cover, I just find a new one. I've probably already landed a few dozen damage on you to help out my teammates in the long haul and since it is a load out that is built for target switching, I won't be too upset.

The pop out and alpha strike might not necessarily hold up in practice because I'm not the only one you have to worry about.

And if I see you again, maybe even 3 minutes later, you're going to eat another few dozen damage, and at this point, you aren't going to be as fresh and robust as you were before. And unlike you, because of my high ROF, I have no reason to hesitate for a very clear shot, so the instant you can possibly shoot me, your screen will be rocking, so you better be a mega pro. And if you are, fair enough. You win my coveted "Monster Hardass" award. Good show, sir.

[Mr G]

I'd stay away from the xl. the side torsos in the cataphfracts are pretty easy to hit. even with a 255 you aren't going to be speedy which makes you an easy target. you'll definitely have twice the staying power with a standard engine. Which is what a "machine gunner" like you needs since your single hits don't do much on their own.

[Analytic D]

Warrax the Chaos Warrior, on 19 January 2013 - 10:21 PM, said:

Okay, if you say so

You are roughly the ~9,647th person to "do the math" and come to the conclusion that AC2s are made of pure awesome. I'm not saying they're completely ineffective, but a lot of people have gone down that road and wound up switching to something that works better in practice than it does in theory.

You will have fun with them anyway, they do have the dakka

I get what you're saying, and yes, it very much is about the dakka for me, but the confidence I gain from not having to worry about every shot allows me to stay calm and play well. The monster long range and very high projectile velocity allows non-trivial early strikes and pinging at a moment's notice. The velocity also increases accuracy by reducing target leading. The ROF gives more tracers, increasing accuracy and also decreasing real target acquisition time. All of this together with the screen shake makes it a disruptive play just a much as it is a minimax play.

I actually built a Dragon-5N with triple AC/2's first, but it never really took off. Too much heat, not enough damage to really threaten, not enough armor, given that DPS, to bump chests and pull it off. But with the extra tonnage, the extra gun, the Ferro, and the DHS, it just falls together just right. The last game I played before I popped back on to check on you guys' responses was a 580 damage, 2 kill, 5 assist win. 144K take in CB and I don't have any bonuses. Even if you play this mech mediocre, you can still be an asset, given it's responsiveness.

[Analytic D]

Just went toe to toe with another 4X that was running quad AC/5's instead. Beat him. And that was with 3 other mechs bearing down on me as well. I don't think he even landed a shot after I got my bead on him. Granted, the very moment after he died, his posse finished me off, but I feel pretty good about it.

DPS matters when it comes down to a DPS race. And the AC/2's not only win on DPS, they've got disruption and accuracy by volume on top of that.

[Dendrobium]

Been running a 4X for a while now. I tried out the 4x 2's at first as well. I had to paper thin my armor to make it worth my while at first. It wasn't working out and, I was slow as crap. So, I put in an XL225. I upped my armor considerably and, I now have 4x 5's. I have around 8 tons of ammo as well. I have yet to run out in a match. Even a long one. I isolated the left and right arms to seperate fire groups and it helps me maintain a close to constant fire rate. Usually, I can open up and cause even the most heavily armored rethink their charge. If I'm left alone, I'll swiss cheese the enemy quickly. A crap round, with a crap PUG, will net me around 300 dmg. A good round, with a decent PUG, I've gotten just over 900 dmg so far. Avg for a good round is around 750.

My weakness? A scout mech that knows what I am. Especially with lag shields getting worse lately. I had one guy in a scout tell me in chat after he killed me that he owned a 4X and knew to focus fire me quickly before I started tearing everyone apart on his team.

[Rokuzachi]

Take two of these out and concentrate your fire on one person. It's hilarious and pretty ********. Almost feels like abusing the system, lol.

Although the same can be said for stacking two of any gimmick build. Things go boom and people rage out.

[Zaptruder]

The superior 4X dakka build is 2x UAC5, 2xAC5.

Thank me later.

[Denno]

The problem with AC2's and sometimes even AC 5's, I've found, is being forced to present your front basically the entire time, ya know? I'll take alpha over dakadaka in my fatty anytime.

[Apoc1138]

You never actually get the full fire rate out of them, I find quad ac5's far easier to handle and get good damage with

[CMGrendel]

AC2s used in a team environment don't get me kills as I use them to keep snipers and LRM boats pinned down. The big problem with using AC2s in an actual game is that the map sizes are too small to really get the most out of the 1200m effective range.

[OneEyed Jack]

For this kind of build I favor 2xUAC5, 2xAC2. The DPS when everything runs smooth is insane, and it stays decent even when the jams start stacking up. The problem, as has been noted is a lack of alpha. Since the introduction of Stalkers and ECM, high alpha builds have been favored on most of the big mechs. High DPS doesn't mean much when you lose a torso 2 seconds into your barrage to 6 PPCs, or have your entire torso peeled open by 36 SRMs. It's what convinced me to go double Gauss on my Ilya over triple UAC5, despite the considerable loss in DPS. There's something to be said for not having to stand in the open with my entire front facing the enemy for an extended period to make my damage count.

[Taizan]

I've moved this topic to the "Battlemechs" sub forum, where it is more appropriate.