183 replies to this topic

[Solis Obscuri]

I still see Awesomes around, though I admit there is little to recommend them over the other assaults right now.

The types of weapons they carry differ little from the Stalker, though, so buffing weapons won't make a comparatively better 'mech.

Improvements to the hitbox or the turning rates or twist angles might help a bit.

[Homeless Bill]

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 January 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

so it's a fast striker then? why be so large as for the blind to be able to hit it, 70-80kph is not fast enough for such a large beast, and considering the only big punch for quick strikes are srms it leaves half the chassis varients redundant.

still when latency netcode etc are fixed we'll see more effective firepower from the awesome, for now though it's one of the hardcore mechs along with the dragon.

Say what you will, but I PUG 90% of the time, and I maintain around a 2:1 KDR using the 8T, 8R, and 9M (the other two I do view as inferior due to hardpoints). 85kph is enough to chase down a few lights (I don't know why anyone pilots slow lights, but they do), a lot of mediums, most heavies, and all other assaults. 64kph in the others isn't fantastic, but it does give you the ability to re-position quickly compared to the other assaults.

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 January 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

unless you can mount ppcs and get away from the inevitable lights mediums and some heavys that can also chase you down at those speeds and force you to retaliate to overheat as their ballistic missile setups rip you're few advantages apart you're just not going to come out on top with those tactics.

only beaten up mechs and idiots outgunned and out of their depth are beaten by the awesome, against anyone else with a modicum of skill and a half decent set up your armor will be toast before theirs.

For all my Awesomes, I run nearly heat-neutral builds so that I can fire constantly without having to worry about overheating. Which also answers your point about being out-gunned. I tend to win 75-80% of my one-on-one engagements with assaults for a few reasons:
1. I front-load my armor. Putting an extra 15 on the front helps a lot.
2. I don't overheat. That Stalker looks real scary until it's a steaming pile of shutdown. After that, it's just meat.
3. I'm good at maneuvering. I see most people play an Awesome like they'd play an Atlas - it's a quick way to die. I can usually circle them fast enough to avoid three to five seconds worth of fire (more if they're a bad pilot). If they have a good line on me, I break off, use some cover to bail out, and come back later.
4. I do the torso-twist tango. If you aren't using your arms as shields and spreading damage around, you're doing it wrong. If you aren't doing it and you're piloting an Awesome, you're doing it dangerously wrong.
5. Surprise. I can't count the number of Atlases I've single-handedly cored with my 4xASRM6 8R because they seem to think I'm not a big deal. I show up, the Atlas lumbers around, pumping as much damage as it can into me, and then I get to 100m, I fire, and half of their armor is gone. All of the sudden, he realizes he's almost hit his heat cap, and my twisting means only half my armor is gone. He starts to back up, avoiding firing his lasers so as not to overheat. My shotgun of SRMs fires again; he's down to orange internals now. There's a flash of desperation, as he fires everything he has in a last-ditch attempt to avoid his impending doom. Too late. Pop.

What you call the "hardcore" 'mechs are really just two of the most effective 'mechs in the right hands, and two of the least effective 'mechs in the wrong hands. Just because you can't brawl with it or because it doesn't sound good on paper doesn't mean it's a piece of **** in practice. I'll take the Awesome over the other two assaults any day.

Edited by Homeless Bill, 21 January 2013 - 05:31 PM.

[DrBlue62]

This is my Awesome, I quite like it. It's very hot if you don't have doubled basics but otherwise it's very manageable when the odds are more or less even. The best part is the SRM's shoot out in pairs of two and are pretty accurate for slow or stationary targets.

[Blue Hymn]

b00zy, on 21 January 2013 - 05:01 PM, said:

the fact is there is no reason to use an awesome the best way to play it is back line fire support but why bother being this slow giant weak target when you could pick any other mech and do that role better and stay up longer sure you can get kills with it and do dmg but at the end of the day you could of done better with a different mech



no you won't as ill also be in my awesome being upset with the hunk of crap that it is and we will both die before we get to each other

Well...stay in a group, use common sense, and you should be able to increase your survivability by a factor of ten?

[BerryChunks]

The only problem is PGi wanted MORE heat punishment to force people to pick and choose when they fire, kind of like putting brakes on the game to make it slower.

However, as anyone knows, it just turns into a mob-fest where you focus down someone who, if using a stock variant, can fire two shots and then has to sit around getting *** blasted because they overheated.

Some people ran this with lasers massively boated or PPC, most ran it with AC or missiles (streak). To counter this boating.... they nerfed DHS. This encouraged more "wait in a huddled group to blast a single person" behavior, as mechs are even more ineffective alone.

To counteract this, people just run AC or streak anyway, or some 6 PPC cheese build to coin flip a kill or death out of it. This leaves the ideal gameplay far out of reach and single or paired lasers are far behind. See: Spider and all the whining it caused. People said the spider sucks massively. Why? Because it lacked low heat weapons with missile hardpoints, and because a DoT weapon that ALSO happens to do low damage in Original Battletech rules is even worse off when going against double armor.

Edited by BerryChunks, 21 January 2013 - 06:02 PM.

[Osski]

RocketDog, on 21 January 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

As someone once said:

"We choose to drive Awesomes. We choose to drive Awesomes in this decade and do the other Awesome-related things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energy-boat skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I have all Awesome variants mastered.

Also, if you have a high K/D ratio, you probably have me to thank.

I logged in just to LOL at this...

LOL!

[Coole]

Adam Steiner and the Sommerset Strikers. You can always love the Awesome's history.

[Wrenchfarm]

I love the Awesome. I use the 9M and 8Q on a regular basis. Had an 8R with an SRM brawler set-up that was wildly successful but had to go to make room in the garage (a choice I regret now, should have ponied up the 300MC.)

I don't know how you people are trying to pilot your Awesome's, but I wreck people all the time in mine. I think a lot of the negativity about them comes from the echo box of people parroting popular opinions without ever trying it themselves. Or from the long period of time when the stock 9M was the trial assault for like a month and was easy meat for anyone with half a brain. I guarantee my 9M doesn't go down like that.

[stemnin]

As to the 8V, don't knock it till you try it. 3xsrm6 (5t ammo), LL, 2ML+MPL, AMS (1t).

oops, TK lol
enemy team on this one had 2 Atlas and a STK, we had 2 STK and me (8V).



This game was a couple hours ago.



Moooooooooooooooooooo


I'll rebuy 8Q when they allow me to reorganize lol.

Edited by stemnin, 21 January 2013 - 07:15 PM.

[Grimlox]

BunnyWabbit, on 21 January 2013 - 04:48 PM, said:

I killed all 8 people in my 9m yesterday with 1450 damage. I'd say the awesome is alright. Whats the deal with the print screen button in this game? It doesnt capture screenshots? I tried to take a screenie but it just gave me a black image when I pasted it into paint. :'( it was the first time ive killed all 8 mechs in a match.

What build we're you running? I've bad the most success in my 3llas setup with 2 srm4 and 1 srm6 with an xl380. Only hit about 1100 dmg though at best.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Homeless Bill, on 21 January 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Say what you will, but I PUG 90% of the time, and I maintain around a 2:1 KDR using the 8T, 8R, and 9M (the other two I do view as inferior due to hardpoints). 85kph is enough to chase down a few lights (I don't know why anyone pilots slow lights, but they do), a lot of mediums, most heavies, and all other assaults. 64kph in the others isn't fantastic, but it does give you the ability to re-position quickly compared to the other assaults.


For all my Awesomes, I run nearly heat-neutral builds so that I can fire constantly without having to worry about overheating. Which also answers your point about being out-gunned. I tend to win 75-80% of my one-on-one engagements with assaults for a few reasons:
1. I front-load my armor. Putting an extra 15 on the front helps a lot.
2. I don't overheat. That Stalker looks real scary until it's a steaming pile of shutdown. After that, it's just meat.
3. I'm good at maneuvering. I see most people play an Awesome like they'd play an Atlas - it's a quick way to die. I can usually circle them fast enough to avoid three to five seconds worth of fire (more if they're a bad pilot). If they have a good line on me, I break off, use some cover to bail out, and come back later.
4. I do the torso-twist tango. If you aren't using your arms as shields and spreading damage around, you're doing it wrong. If you aren't doing it and you're piloting an Awesome, you're doing it dangerously wrong.
5. Surprise. I can't count the number of Atlases I've single-handedly cored with my 4xASRM6 8R because they seem to think I'm not a big deal. I show up, the Atlas lumbers around, pumping as much damage as it can into me, and then I get to 100m, I fire, and half of their armor is gone. All of the sudden, he realizes he's almost hit his heat cap, and my twisting means only half my armor is gone. He starts to back up, avoiding firing his lasers so as not to overheat. My shotgun of SRMs fires again; he's down to orange internals now. There's a flash of desperation, as he fires everything he has in a last-ditch attempt to avoid his impending doom. Too late. Pop.

What you call the "hardcore" 'mechs are really just two of the most effective 'mechs in the right hands, and two of the least effective 'mechs in the wrong hands. Just because you can't brawl with it or because it doesn't sound good on paper doesn't mean it's a piece of **** in practice. I'll take the Awesome over the other two assaults any day.

8t 8r srm spam the only good weapon stack an awesome can run nuff said. catering to the small maps to ruin the original builds show the awesome as sub par unless completely reworked. bet you load out ssrms in the 9m too. as for the majority of the mech's set up it's inferrior catapults do your job better hense there's more of them about. awesomes needing the missles boat varients to justfy it's exsitance these days is just sad. 8q should be the main star the awesome people recognise as much as the 9m but without the speed perks its a dead mech as you yourself said. the main build amongest all awesomes inferior by MWO standards says awesomes are in trouble.

quiet simply when an energy boat mech has to fall back to srm spam to be competative something is well broken.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 21 January 2013 - 07:50 PM.

[Mazzyplz]

i wish my screenshots were working, i could post some matches


850dmg matches with 8r. 2xerPPC 4xSRM6 (pretty good mech but if targeted by a few mechs you're dead)

780dmg with my > 8t -4xLL -4xsrm6. (it's a risky mech though!!! - you could do around 800 IF you survive, those lasers are very telling...)

and 680dmg matches with 9m. 3xerPPC, 1xSRM4, 1 med L, 1 medpulse, 1 small L. (the most consistent of the 3, just stay away shoot tri ppc alphas and then up close srm to the face every few secs with the fast cycling srm4 and the lasers - only do 57kph on a standard engine though, but it's quite enough if i can keep them at bay)


oh
i think i have thought of a solution to the screenshot problem, it may help to alt enter out of fullscreen to press print screen...
i haven't tried it yet.


PS> i will keep piloting awesomes but it's really suspicious why the developers made it so crappy. think about this?
an atlas gets shot by 3 full salvos of lrm20, shot by 2 players at once. its health goes down to the mid 70's.
a stalker? high 60s, and some stalkers can survive up to 12% health if packing a STD engine.
an awesome? hit by 3 full salvo of lrm, lets assume a fair ammount of them miss... it's still an insta kill

Edited by Mazzyplz, 21 January 2013 - 07:56 PM.

[GalaxyBluestar]

Mazzyplz, on 21 January 2013 - 07:52 PM, said:

then 850dmg matches with 8t, 2xerPPC 4xSRM6

and 680dmg matches with 9m, 3xerPPC, 1xSRM4, 1 med L, 1 medpulse, 1 small L.

that's what i want to see more of that.

BTW what engine does your 8t take? not much speed when you have 4xsrms6 and 2 erppc.

[machine]

size wise the awesome is too easy to hit. it should be artistically improved to be a bet ...thinner side to side. the reason i say this is ct and both sides are super easy to hit over and over as large blocks. just visually distinct segments and easy to land the shots there because of size.

[Mazzyplz]

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 January 2013 - 07:55 PM, said:

that's what i want to see more of that.

BTW what engine does your 8t take? not much speed when you have 4xsrms6 and 2 erppc.

sorry man i sold that one after i mastered it in the beginning of the xp weekend, the lasers are just not good on the awesome IMO, they give you away it's like waving a neon sign and you have to keep it on target for like 1.5 secs. but i'm pretty sure i was doing 61 or 63 kph with speed trick and 57-59 without.
it wasn't my slowest build

still have the other 2 though

Edited by Mazzyplz, 21 January 2013 - 08:07 PM.

[Lightfoot]

The reason you may have seen more this weekend is players wanted to get some XP for mastering the Awesome so they brought theirs out of retirement. That's what I did.

To me the Awesome plays like a medium mech, 55 tonnner. It's not a brawler in spite of trying to be. It really has to lurk at the edges of the lance to be effective at all because it is the most fragile mech. I suppose if a light mech were moving at 52 kph, it would be more fragile.

A little more toughness or special cooling ability would re-create the Battletech Awesome.

Also, does it seem like LRMs are weak on the Awesome? I see Atlas's with a couple of LRM 15's doing high damage, but I load 4x Artemis LRM 15 into my Awesome and pffft! They do about 2-3 % damage per 60 missiles and I have to fire off 10-15 rounds to bring a mech down and I always use TAG on targets. That just doesn't sound right. If I get hit by LRM 30 to 40 I am blown to bits on the 4th or 5th slavo.

Anyway the Awesome is too easy to hit, give it the hitbox sizes of the Atlas to toughen it up. Maybe make the Arm hitboxxes bigger too. Awesome has big arms anyway. Special cooling ability so it can run the ER versions of Energy weapons like it should.

Funny that DHS 1.4 only affects Energy Boats and Missiles and Ballistics are heat neutral, only overheating once per match on average. Meanwhile Energy configs overheat and shutdown over and over in a match. The AWS-9M stock version shutsdown for 30 seconds every 4th or 5th salvo and it's not like the Awesome can absorb damage while it cools back down.

I know!!! Why not fix the Awesome!!!??? What could it hurt? I trust the PGI devs not to make the Awesome a monster mech and even if they did accidently make it too powerful, they could just tone it down to a balance point.

Edited by Lightfoot, 21 January 2013 - 08:12 PM.

[RickySpanish]

Earlier this evening I snuck my 8R round the back of two catapults and a 9M. I brutalized all three one after another with my SRM shotgun, and proceeded to completely shatter the rest of their team. It was the most shockingly beautiful display of violence I've seen in this game since the first time an 8R ripped my Ilya to shreds at point blank, and I fell in love. The next game got me killed, but not before I'd stripped everything off of two Stalkers and killed a couple of cataphracts and became the last man standing.

I can assure you that if the Awesome lives up to its name in the hands of a merely novice pilot such as myself, it is capable of being an utter terror in the hands of an expert, fully elited.

[GalaxyBluestar]

RickySpanish, on 21 January 2013 - 08:08 PM, said:

Earlier this evening I snuck my 8R round the back of two catapults and a 9M. I brutalized all three one after another with my SRM shotgun, and proceeded to completely shatter the rest of their team. It was the most shockingly beautiful display of violence I've seen in this game since the first time an 8R ripped my Ilya to shreds at point blank, and I fell in love. The next game got me killed, but not before I'd stripped everything off of two Stalkers and killed a couple of cataphracts and became the last man standing.

I can assure you that if the Awesome lives up to its name in the hands of a merely novice pilot such as myself, it is capable of being an utter terror in the hands of an expert, fully elited.

GalaxyBluestar, on 21 January 2013 - 07:43 PM, said:

quiet simply when an energy boat mech has to fall back to srm spam to be competative something is well broken.

Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 21 January 2013 - 08:12 PM.

[Ursus_Spiritus]

I have three Awesome's that I run 8Q, 9M and 8R (replacing that chassis soon).
Mine are hard to miss, they are BIG and crimson red.

Though I have seen less and less of my Awesome brothers on the field as of late. *wipes tear*

They may be gone, they are not forgotten!

*heads to his waiting primed and purring Crimson 8Q*

- 8100d 5p4tt3r out!

[BunnyWabbit]

Grimlox, on 21 January 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

What build we're you running? I've bad the most success in my 3llas setup with 2 srm4 and 1 srm6 with an xl380. Only hit about 1100 dmg though at best.

2x srm4s 1srm6 and 4x medium lasers xl385. Ive tried it with pulse and or large lasers as well but medium work best for heat management and provide the most dps.