[gamesondemand]

It's not that bad... the commando has a weird cockpit area, and the cataphract is like lolwutsmall.

[General Muffinmann]

kind of weird how far the raven's side torso extend forward

[Rebel_816]

i dont think hes quite right about the cicada...when i tried one i felt like i got head shotted all the time.....it was mostly during the artemis glitch where every missile rained straight down and the way its shaped usually hits the head or CT though.
the stalkers is fairly easy to hit too if you wind up slightly above one. you can hit the "roof" part, not just the windows.

[gamesondemand]

Yea, the raven side torsos are funky. If you look at them in the mechlab you'll see why though, the ammo storage boxes and equipment storage are there, or at least that's what it looks like on the mech. Still don't understand why it's like that, I end up dying from side torso explosions more often than ct hits.

[Rebel_816]

they are pretty ****ing hard to kill still. even with the lag reduction. its just hard to hit the same spot repeatedly.

jenners though....jenners are fun to shoot with ac20's.....especially when they're in mid air and explode and spiral away with the jump jets stuck on like the one the other night,

[gamesondemand]

Not really, I actually find them incredibly easy to kill, maybe because I know what kinda shots **** mine up hahah. If you want to take it down fast aim for the side torsos, I've almost never seen a raven with a standard engine. If you want to stop it from running circles take out the legs, they get damaged incredibly fast for a light mech.

[iPaintYou]

So I changed up my CTF-4X build a little bit. I kept running out of ammo leaving me weaponless and I had nothing to help me against smaller mechs runnings in circles around me. Here's what it looks like with the changes I made.

Base: CTF-4X
-STD 255
-DHS in each side torso
-Two AC/10s
-Four tons of AC/10 ammo
-Two Medium Lasers
-Two Machine Guns (I just like them, I know they don't do much. I feel like they **** with people more than anything.)
-Two tons of Machine Gun Ammo
-AMS w/ two tons of ammo
-Endo Steel

Two AC/10s do as much damage as four AC/5s but now I have the lasers and machine guns to shoot at smaller things with. So far I've been doing more damage per game with this setup.

[gamesondemand]

Drop the mg's and one ton of ams ammo, you can either put more lasers, more heatsinks, max armor, or go up in engine size. Personally I would see if I could fit 2 ac20's instead of the ac10's.

[iPaintYou]

And this is why I post here. Still new to the game and figuring out what's important. So, I can't put more lasers as two is the max this mech can hold. AC/20s won't fit. There are 9 slots available on each arm and AC/20s need 10. I can either go to a 245 with two more heatsinks or a 255 keeping the two I already have. Which should I do? Everything says limit reached in my armor section. Some numbers are lower than the max but I assume that's because I don't have the Ferro Fibrous Armour (which I don't have enough slots for).

[gamesondemand]

The way the armor system works is a bit backwards, but basically the total number of tons of armor you can put on that section is the total number you have there. However, it is cumulative for that whole section, front and back. So say you have a max armor of 80 for your center torso. You can max it all 80/80 for your front, but that leaves your rear center torso bare. Usually it'll be something like 60/80 front 20/80 back and that will leave you maxed. I say drop what I told you to before, switch back to ac5's and max on ammo. Add a heatsink or two, have between 6-8 tons of ammo for your ac5's and see if that'll carry you through a match. I'd stay with regular ac5's instead of ultras to save on tonnage, plus no gun jam downtime so you can have a steady stream of dakka dakka to better cheese off other players. Also make sure you group stuff appropriately, like 1 group both arms, 2 group torso guns, 3 group lasers, 4 group left side, 5 group right side, 6 alpha. Whatever you can remember, and if you can hide half your mech behind something to snipe with only one side that's better than just standing in the open and getting blasted.

[iPaintYou]

Thank you for the info. It really helps a lot. Now, I think I am going to have to stick with the AC/10s. Reason being that the 5s add 8 tons total over the 10s. Because of this, the configuration I listed here is the best I can do (notice how I forgot AMS ammo too). With the 10s, I'm able to have lasers, the 60 rounds of AC/10 ammo has been lasting me the entire game, and I'll be faster once I upgrade the engine after dropping what you told me too. I think I'm going to go with the 245 and two more heatsinks. It's only 2.3KPH slower than the 255 but will be much better on heat.

[General Muffinmann]

lol mgs. i had a 4 mg spider. was lolz but i actually did alright with it

[iPaintYou]

I like the sound of them more than anything. I know they're garbage. Hopefully they make them more useful in the future.

[gamesondemand]

I came up with this build after not being lazy and pulling up the mechlab. I really don't see how people use 4 ac5's and have ammo to spam like they do in matches. Must have really really really slow engines. I agree with sticking with the ac10's. You might want to drop some ammo and go with more heatsinks, but see how it performs first. It might not get all that hot if you can sit back and not have to use your medium lasers.

MG's will only become useful once the crit system is implemented. For now they are pure wasted tonnage, might as well drop another few heatsinks in for the tonnage.

[iPaintYou]

I'm not sure why, but I can't quite do that build. I have the same exact thing right now except I'm using a 245 and (I could be wrong, I just don't see it) but I think you forgot AMS ammo. Right now my mech is at 69.5 tons. Either, way I think it's much better now. Thank you. And so far I've been plenty fine on heat. With two more heatsinks now, I should be even better.

[General Muffinmann]

i think i heard somewhere they are going to make MGs do bonus damage against parts that have had all their armor stripped off so it could be a good quick finisher.

[gamesondemand]

I didn't put an AMS at all. If you feel you take a lot of lrm fire drop 2 heat sinks, grab an ams and just buff the leg armor, which I dinked a point off of each.

MG's and crit system, as I already stated. Crit system basically means that certain weapons have higher chances of doing critical damage to mechs, aka finding ammo storages or destroying guns while your armor is still high. LBX's, LRM's, MG's, most ammo dependent weapons will all be good crit hitters because of the frangible nature of the round. However, it's very hard to balance the values for said crits, which is why it hasn't been implemented and it will be an absolute game changer once it's introduced. I think they've been sneaking bits of it in, thus the HP on weapons, but for the most part it's not anywhere near ready to be released.

[big_scott]

Makes sense. Though I would like to see those ammo based weapons to have a chance to be critted by laser weapons. In the novels auto cannons and missile launchers are always having their loading mechanism getting fused the rest of the battle because a laser melted armor that flowed over the launcher and then hardened. Maybe even have it jam the weapon for an extended amount of time and unjam later to simulate breaking the mechanism free. It would have to be a very small chance of happening and would be complicated to code, I imagine, so i doubt they would ever bother but it would be a cool little detail to had more immersion.

[gamesondemand]

Immersion=no hud except the small reticule for arm aiming, actually having to use the cockpit displays. Try playing with no hud sometime in a mech that doesn't have arms that move side to side, like a jenner or some such. It's actually quite fun and challenging, besides not having enemy mech info.

[Rebel_816]

so far best thing ive found for finding crits is my 2x cataphract....ac20 + 2 srm6's gets me ammo explosions like nobodies business.

my ac20 does tend to get taken out a lot though.

if the cockpit dispays were a little easier to read, it would be ****ing awesome to have nothing other than a hud. we should get a little more immersion in that sense when they add the ecm effect to ppc's...o hope it at least scrambles everything like it did in mw4.

and heres the map glitch i got the other night...this was a new one lol. wasnt as bad as the other 2 games where i had no map whatsoever...just a blank box.

[gamesondemand]

That's not a bad glitch at all, at least you can see almost everything except map terrain.