74 replies to this topic

[Tarman]

Voidsinger, on 01 February 2013 - 07:46 PM, said:

Part of the issue is MWO.

The small maps 100% favour brawlers, due to the ability to close to brawling range. Support mechs aren't really getting the separate classification in 8 vs 8 battles. Maybe in 12 vs 12.

The 8Q. Direct fire support mechs are effectively obsolete in MWO, except as snipers.
The 8R/8T: If your team will keep the enemy from brawling with you, can really push out damage. If they will not, try to keep, distance and stuff the team.
The 8V/9M: Yet to work on these.

Big issue with Awesomes is target profile, moreso the huge centre torso. Coring is usually your fate before the rest of the mech's armour hits orange.

The easy-button on the Awesome's face makes me think the Pretty Baby paintjob is going to lead to even more headshots on those variants. Come to think of it, the YLW points to its most vulnerable spot, its main gun. Is this some kind of in-joke by PGI paint monkeys? And I guess any paint on a Commando is on its weak spot. >_______>

[Mazzyplz]

awesome 8r is an absolute beast, you don't have to fear any other mechs save for an atlas (usually founder's)
and you can kill the splat cats with it if you have better luck than them on the dice roll and you hit them first (which is easy when you have long range weapons)
you can outmaneuver a stalker
you can insta kill light mechs with the srm shotgun


don't get the pretty baby though, it looks like a souped up 8v, which is the weakest awesome.

the 8t and 9m aren't much better than 8v. 9m is a poor ppc carrier in particular with this shutdown bug, because triple ppc strike will shut you down and kill you, before it was OK. - it's speed isn't much of a help usually.
8t is bad with large lasers because you need to keep your cursor on the enemy for a while and it's painfully obvious where those lasers are coming from and which gigantic slow mech is shooting them, maybe a different build would help but i didn't find any


haven't tried 8q yet but mastered 8r i will be piloting for a long time

(ps. i will say the rest of the AWS roster needs some kind of buff though, maybe a little bit more armor in all chassis would make it TRULY awesome)

Edited by Mazzyplz, 01 February 2013 - 08:39 PM.

[Suprentus]

People complain about the Awesome's large center torso -- but isn't that kind of an advantage in a certain way? It means the Awesome can get away with using XL engines, since your CT is likely to soak up most of the damage. Conversely, an XL engine on a Stalker or Atlas with their really thin CT profile, but broadside-of-barn side torsos, is suicide. They have more survivability, but the Awesome has way better mobility and maneuverability.

I run my main Awesome with an XL engine, and it does pretty well for that exact reason. I have mobility, and enough tonnage for whatever weapons I want. With mobility, I have more of a choice against a Stalker and Atlas of where, when, and how I want to engage, or withdraw if the situation calls for it.

Edited by Suprentus, 01 February 2013 - 08:01 PM.

[Protection]

The 9M 80+ kph Awesome is not a bad mech at all, but it is still a poor replacement for the firepower of the Stalker or the dominating presence of the Atlas.

The problems are twofold I see:

• A Long Range Sniper mech -- the Awesome -- is very large and wide and makes a poor sniper being so easy to see and hit.
  
• As the smallest Assault, any weapons loadout is imitable by the Stalker, but the Stalker has a better profile, more tonnage and more armour.

So the only thing the Awesome does especially well at the moment in the assault position is move faster than the other Assaults - making Honey Badger builds (MLas/SRM brawlers with huge 350+ engines) the only really interesting thing to do with the chassis.

A tonnage limitation might help the Awesome, especially compared to the Atlas.

[Lightfoot]

Jacmac, on 01 February 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

I elited the AWS-8Q and then sort of gave up on it. Kind of fun to boat lasers, but heat is pretty borked in MWO. The devs sense of "balance" is what has killed the Awesome, you really have to have a mix of ballistics and energy weapons or ballistics and missiles to get anything close to heat friendly in an assault mech in this game.

This is certainly true. Ballistics and Energy=little or no heat management. Energy and maximum DHS=unmanagable heat issues.

The Awesome certainly looks good, very realistic giant robot, but is the weakest of the Assaults by a good margin. You will have to decide for yourself.

[Wintersdark]

With the current matchmaker, the awesome is inferior (though I like it regardless). Once tonnage is included, though, that could definitely change.

[Zolaz]

Hmmmm ... wonder what they are smoking over at PGI to put out the Awesome in the current form. Do they expect people who play the game instead of collecting mechs to actually buy it?

[GalaxyBluestar]

i voted stalker simply cause my playstyle doesn't match and/or ping with bad fps doesn't help my awesome swagger.

awesome is great in the right hands and i'm so happy to see people using it well these days than last month. people have taken the challenge well the awesome is becoming viable {especially pleased to see medium laser boat harrasers around like i had but prefer erppc carnage!}

awesome mechs are for awesome pilots... i pilot an stalker don't be substandard like me.

[Vaneshi SnowCrash]

Zolaz, on 01 February 2013 - 12:43 PM, said:

So with Pretty Baby coming out what do you think of the Awesome compared to other assaults? Is it worth Mastering the chassis for the Pretty Baby? Or is it just a waste of time when you could be in an Atlas or a Stalker?

To go off on a tangent, I think Pretty Baby will be very telling when it lands in MWO. To expand, Pretty Baby is nothing more than a stock Awesome (the 3xPPC 8Q if I remember) with a nifty paint job it is the man (or in this case woman) driving it that's making it dance around the battlefield.

So I'm very curious about how PGI are going to go about implementing what amounts to an NPC pilot stats in this game.

[Xetherius]

As an Atlas pilot I'd like to say that unless there's a more threatening target, I'm going to be aiming for the broadside of the barn. I mean, they're nearly impossible to miss, overheat in the middle of the fight, have armor made of tissue paper, and are occasionally packing a tasty XL. What's not to like?

[Vassago Rain]

Zolaz, on 02 February 2013 - 12:40 AM, said:

Hmmmm ... wonder what they are smoking over at PGI to put out the Awesome in the current form. Do they expect people who play the game instead of collecting mechs to actually buy it?

It's simple.
The awesome is made for boating lasers, so has a lot of guns for the weight. Atlases are there to tank.

But the system didn't really end up working, so we have an undergunned 100 tonner. They'll fix it by moving hardpoints around for heroes and new variants, I'm sure, but I don't think they'll patch current models.

[Zolaz]

I think PGI is putting in Hero Mechs for all the substandard mechs first. Look at what we got so far. Death Knell, the Wang and now Pretty Baby. The only good one out of the bunch is the Muppet.

[Zoccola]

I have been piloting a AWS-8Q for a 5 days now. I am averaging about 2.5 kills a game with it. They play very differently from Atlases and Stalkers. First and foremost, they are faster than stalkers, and will on average have a better tonnage to engine size ratio. This is directly proportional to the speed at which you torso twist. Why is this important? because most Awesomes tend to have an empty arm to be used as a shield. This is also very important as while most people complain about the wide front body, the profile of an awesome is very thin.

To use an awesome properly, you have to turn your shield arm towards the enemy firing on you. The damage will be absorbed by your ablative arm, and your thin profile will cause shots to miss. When your guns are ready to fire again, you swing your torso back, shoot, and swing your arm in the way again. I have brawled agaisnt atlases like this. It works.

Another thing is that the Awesome is not a tank with which to trundle into short ranged combat. You have to pick your engagements. With a large laser loadout and speed, you can stick to your optimal range of 300-450, which puts you out of range of srms and makes you hard to hit with ac20s.

More importantly, concerning the Prettybaby, it can be equipped with a XL400 engine. They will hold 5 internal heat sinks, that desipate heat at 2.0x rate. Additionally, this will make the AWS-PB move at a little over 100 kmph with speed tweak. That is an Assault mech moving medium mech speed. Thats twice the speed of an Atlas or Stalker. They will move behind them and alpha. With 3x SRM6 and 3 large lasers, thats a lot of pain.

Another problem is that Endo doesnt really work with the Awesome, and everyone slaps Endo on everything right out of the gate. You gain 3 tonnes of weight but lose 14 crit slots. 3 tons of DHS is 9 crit slots. The awesome needs all the crit space it can get.

With the upcoming reduction in heat cost of Large Pulses and PPCs, the laserboat Awesome will become very scary when used properly.

[Cataphract]

Awesomes are a real preference mech if there ever was one. In the right hands its nothing to take lightly. Given its size and speed, or lack there of, its best suited for what it was intended, fire support. I have carved more than a few mechs apart using PPCs, LLs, and LRMs. Given most assaults brawl using an Awesome for direct fire support can actually work out quite well since you can have them stripped of armor before they get within range with thier own weapons. I still love seeing people say an assault mech or even a hero mech isnt worth it without ECM. Makes me laugh. On that note too bad our hero Awesome wasn't Adam Steiners. A modified 9m that removed the MPLS and added ECM.

[QuantumButler]

I've seen 50 ton mechs last longer in all out brawls against Atlases or Stalkers than the Awesome can.

[Oppresor]

I think the Awesome runs a close second to the Atlas, its certainly a much better bet than the pile of junk that they call the Stalker. I had a lot of fun with the trial Awesome, 3 PPC's can do a lot of damage. When I complained in a thread that the armour was weak, someone told me that the Awesome was a support Mech and that I shouldn't be using it as a brawler; sorry that didn't stop me.

Since discovering that I could buy and build my own Mech using C-Bills, I have gone back to the Atlas. At the end of the day this is my preferred fire unit........Unless they introduce the Omega, but that's just wishful thinking.

[QuantumButler]

Oppresor, on 04 February 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

I think the Awesome runs a close second to the Atlas, its certainly a much better bet than the pile of junk that they call the Stalker. I had a lot of fun with the trial Awesome, 3 PPC's can do a lot of damage. When I complained in a thread that the armour was weak, someone told me that the Awesome was a support Mech and that I shouldn't be using it as a brawler; sorry that didn't stop me.

Since discovering that I could buy and build my own Mech using C-Bills, I have gone back to the Atlas. At the end of the day this is my preferred fire unit........Unless they introduce the Omega, but that's just wishful thinking.

Oppresor, on 04 February 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

I think the Awesome runs a close second to the Atlas, its certainly a much better bet than the pile of junk that they call the Stalker. I had a lot of fun with the trial Awesome, 3 PPC's can do a lot of damage. When I complained in a thread that the armour was weak, someone told me that the Awesome was a support Mech and that I shouldn't be using it as a brawler; sorry that didn't stop me.

Since discovering that I could buy and build my own Mech using C-Bills, I have gone back to the Atlas. At the end of the day this is my preferred fire unit........Unless they introduce the Omega, but that's just wishful thinking.

Hahaha.

[TexAce]

This is how it compares! AWS-8V with 1 ERLL, 2 LPL, 3 SSRM, 1SL

This just happened and oh my god it was the most suspenful match ever.
We were pretty even, the match lasted long, but while we tried to crush them all, they capped all bases. At the end I killed the last guy while they were at 735 points (we had aroun 350 lol). He was a zombie, just head and ct and legs and I hunted him with my 65 km/h Awesome with my heart pounding.

Best Pug Match ever...

Edited by TexAss, 04 February 2013 - 04:20 PM.

[Oppresor]

TexAss, on 04 February 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

This is how it compares! AWS-8V with 1 ERLL, 2 LPL, 3 SSRM, 1SM

This just happened and oh my god it was the most suspenful match ever.
We were pretty even, the match lasted long, but while we tried to crush them all, they capped all bases. At the end I killed the last guy while they were at 735 points (we had aroun 350 lol). He was a zombie, just head and ct and legs and I hunted him with my 65 km/h Awesome with my heart pounding.

Best Pug Match ever...

Yes there is definitely something about the Awesome; I still smile when I think about it.

[Mazzyplz]

we should start dropping with other awesome pilots, call it the brotherhood of awesome.
8 man aws drops what say you?