Yeah I’ve never been that fond of MRMs, good for farming damage numbers but that’s about it.
For me they are just fun and scares most people back into coverage. I'm used to not killing people running my Lights, so probably has something to do with me using them far too much.
I like pairing MRMs with a decent source of pinpoint, so I can actually remove components once they're stripped. Nothing worse than facing a fully red mech and emptying further dozens of MRMs into them before finally dying yourself, the enemy still standing.
MRMs are a good way for lighter mechs to punch up in terms of firepower (especially since the ammo is light); putting a bunch of them on an assault or a big heavy is kinda meme-y, but a lot of mediums and lighter heavies get kinda silly missile quirks they can take advantage of.
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
So is MW5 legit? Does it successfully capture that Mechwarrior 2: Mercs magic?
Not sure. But it’s very stompy and I love that about it
Did the new DLC fix the stupid AI or bullshit enemy spawns? Or do you still need to mod the game to make it suck less?
The AI is still eh. I think slightly better* but still eh. Enemy spawns were never fucked up and are fine.
Enemies never spawned behind you unless you walked backwards into them. Enemies would already be on the map and would make towards your position. You would move forward and so they would naturally follow in behind you. Sometimes enemies would spawn horizontally to you if you entered their spawn area. But enemies would and do not ever spawn behind you.
That isn’t to say there aren’t changes. Demolition missions drop far fewer enemies and are no longer infinite and tend to have a larger initial force and first drop.
The enemy spawn mod was and is worse than vanilla.
*the AI is still very bad at shooting tanks first when it has a short range setup or when enemy mechs have a long range setup. It’s also still bad at shooting LRMs.
It’s still hands down the best feeling mechwarrior to have every been made. You feel big and heavy like a godly war machine.
My main gripes are.
1) there are no infantry and so a lot of the weapons don’t see their use case (looking at you small lasers).
2) it’s really hard to set up mechs to get them to do what you want. Not so hard that it’s impossible but AI mechs need far more cooling than a player mech would need and it’s really hard to judge that.
3) there is a lot of unexplained esoterica in how mechs perform that isn’t well documented.
4) SSRMs track too fast so you cannot shoot them around corners
So is MW5 legit? Does it successfully capture that Mechwarrior 2: Mercs magic?
Not sure. But it’s very stompy and I love that about it
Did the new DLC fix the stupid AI or bullshit enemy spawns? Or do you still need to mod the game to make it suck less?
Enemy spawns were never fucked up and are fine.
Enemies never spawned behind you unless you walked backwards into them. Enemies would already be on the map and would make towards your position. You would move forward and so they would naturally follow in behind you. Sometimes enemies would spawn horizontally to you if you entered their spawn area. But enemies would and do not ever spawn behind you.
We've played, and continue to play, different games, then. I have had mechs/VTOLs pop out of the aether directly in front of me. Literally last night, just *pop*, a flock of 6 VTOLs appeared 400m in front of me, in space that was unoccupied.
The game is still janky as fuck. But it's still stompy mechs that go boom and pew.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
+1
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
So is MW5 legit? Does it successfully capture that Mechwarrior 2: Mercs magic?
I have no idea since I never played MW2, or if I did I honestly do not remember it.
That said, it is a whole lot better today than it was last year when I played it. All the gripes I had back when I originally played it are now gone and I'm enjoying the game. So much so that I load it up rather than MWO this past weekend (after I finished the MWO monthly event). Originally I complained about enemies seemingly appearing out of nowhere (I say seemingly since there are people who say that the enemies are already there and just move to engage), way too many vehicles and turrets over mechs (and overpowered at that), AI that was dumber and better as meat shields than actually being useful, and way too much damage from stepping on tanks and walking through exploding buildings (mainly pipes, energy sites, etc.). All of those seem to be gone or lowered and enemy patrols announce themselves before actually showing up on radar. The AI is a bit better from what I see and they can actually take out enemy mechs as well as vehicles. I agree that their LRM shooting is bad to worse, but occasionally they land a salvo or two.
I only bought the base game since I was hesitant to even give that much to PGI for the game, but glad I did and will pick up the DLC when it goes on sale.
I do occasionally get vtol pop in when approaching a base that the game thinks is behind a hill. Vtols spawn at altitude and then fly up before approaching so they don’t get caught on terrain. So sometimes if you have an angle on a base over a ridge the game will think that it can spawn vtol but you actually have vision on the area and get some pop in.
I do occasionally get vtol pop in when approaching a base that the game thinks is behind a hill. Vtols spawn at altitude and then fly up before approaching so they don’t get caught on terrain. So sometimes if you have an angle on a base over a ridge the game will think that it can spawn vtol but you actually have vision on the area and get some pop in.
It’s pretty uncommon though.
I'd say that most (if not all) of the in-vision bullshit pop-in spawns happens during story/campaign missions. Y'know, the scripted ones that have a bit of nuance to them. The story mission where I recovered my SRM boat? I actually hit the checkpoints kind of backwards and walked through where the enemy counter-force materialized. But, since I was in a faster mech than my lancemates (one of whom was a human friend who was helping me in co-op), I hit the spawn trigger location while my 3 lancemates were still in the enemy spawn and they got to see a lance pop into existence in front of them. I would say that it was rude...but my buddy was piloting my beastly twin-Heavy Rifle Cyclops Sleipnir at the time.
Erlkönig on
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
+4
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited June 2021
I never thought about it before, but a generic Outreach start in career mode is kinda a missed opportunity.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I never thought about it before, but a generic Outreach start in career mode is kinda a missed opportunity.
Generic Outreach start?
I fired up Career mode cause Battletech EX is slow enough that it's annoying me, and honestly MW5 is pretty fun. But I started it on my terms -- started Rasalhauge, because it was the only start I didn't recognize. (Doing a bit of research, it's an obvious teaser for a Clan Invasion expansion?) Got rid of all my mechs except for the smallest, a Locust LCT-1V and dove in.
So, uh, yeah. The game isn't designed for this, btw. Not even in the least. Even the easiest missions in the game suggest 165 tons of mech. Defense is out. Assassination is out, cause every Assassination mission I've seen so far has been a medium or two + whatever else spawns. Warzone is out.
Destruction works, because Machineguns eat buildings alive. Raid is even better cause you only have 1-3 targets per nav point -- rush in, pew pew, rush out.
So after a few of those, I was doing well enough that I picked up a Firestarter Hero that I saw -- a Torrent. 4 Flamers, 4 Machine Guns. Same story as above, except it turns out that 4 flamers will just melt a light mech (and mediums too I think?) leg off. Just... gone. But of course, I have no rep and can't salvage even light mechs yet. And ran out of flamers, but S-Lasers are even better. 4 S-Lasers and 4 Machine Guns and I have enough firepower to rival some Assault Mechs. (Ok, just the one, but, still.)
Picked up a Wolfhound, 1LL and 3MLs. Shit for heta management, but at least I could start killing bigger things -- and can snipe raid targets from further away. Slowly grinding my way up. Ended up with a Dervish at the end of my session, rounding out my lance finally. 2 LRMs, 2 SSRMs, and a few not-pulse MLs.
I never thought about it before, but a generic Outreach start in career mode is kinda a missed opportunity.
(Doing a bit of research, it's an obvious teaser for a Clan Invasion expansion?)
It gets even more obvious.
(in-game news blurb spoilers)
throughout 3049 you'll get a series of news stories hinting at it. Starts with Comstar sending (and subsequently losing all contact with) an expedition to the galactic core, and ends with outer-periphery worlds in the "north" going completely dark.
Fartacus_the_Mighty on
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I never thought about it before, but a generic Outreach start in career mode is kinda a missed opportunity.
Generic Outreach start?
-snip-.
Well I suppose given the game's start I guess I mean generic Galatea start. Galatea (and later Outreach) being the preeminent mercenary hubs. Galatea itself was the home of the Mercenary Review Board.
If you were a Merc in the Inner Sphere then Galatea (later Outreach) would be the closest thing you had to a home.
Both worlds are fairly (relatively speaking) close to Sol.
Not sure what kind of Lance it'd start with though.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Solo (no AI) Mechwarrior 5 really doesn’t work until muuuch later. Mainly due to skill progression. But lights/mediums definitely do work once your skill is up. I dropped ~250 tonnes into a 95/100 difficulty assassination earlier today and did just fine.
As for mechs for a Galata start… basic starting lance is about 115 t right?
Anyway we want to be semi-unique apart from the other starting lances (it’s difficult to be super unique)so let’s say…
A pretty beefy starting mech but it cannot be an enforcer or centurion or griffin. This leaves either a Wolverine or shadowhawk. I think the wolverine is usually the superior mech for players due to arm gun and dead side so let’s go SHD since this lets you give it to the AI easier if you so choose. Dervish 6M is also a possibility but I would prefer both a worse mech and a mech that didn’t require refitting to not suck.
SHD-2D / WVR-6k / DV-6M
After that is about finding complimentary mechs that are interesting and wolfhounds are super uncommon so
WLF-1
From here we have 45 tonnes left so we are stuck with a 20 and 25 t
LCT-1M
COM - 1D
All mechs that can be long or short range. Mechs that have decent but not obscene refit possibilities. And mechs that don’t show up a lot in the other sets
I just got the Kintaro hero-mech in MW5. So good (even if I had to downgrade every weapon in the mech to stop it from overheating). I'm running it like a Dervish on steroids with 3xMLs, 4xSRM4s (SRM4s is the god-weapon of MW5) and 1xLRM10-ST (because I need it to kill SRM carriers and VTOLs.)
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
But did you know that certain events like the drop ships will trigger once the garrison drops below certain percentages, and that the events will all trigger at once when you get the “you are now in range” message?
Did you know that there are some garrisons that are so small that a single air strike will almost wipe them out?
Yeah
Let’s just say that my UAC Annie limped into the exit zone on one open leg with only one UAC and 2 ML left, no ammo, and both side torsos held on with bailing wire and prayer, luckily my lancemates weren’t nearly as damaged and were able to hold aggro on the second dropship’s load long enough
I've seen one of the 100 tonner MADs for sale in an industrial hub on the Steiner-Kurita border (but I didn't have the credits to buy it at the time).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Man those last story missions are like "So you want to fight every fucking person in the world."
Nah, they're more like
"So. I hear you like double-gauss headshots."
I hear career mode allows you to play the Campaign as a normal mission chain. Doing those last few missions without
a double-gauss SL / Clan kitted out Nightstar
would be a feat in and of itself, I tell you what.
it’s the standard NSR-9J variant, which is still big given you get it in game before XL engines, Medium Pulse Lasers, Gauss Rifles, ERPPCs, and Double Heat Sinks are common
So after playing around with the trebuchet-LG a lot I have a newfound respect for SSRMs as the conditional king of SRMs.
Condition 1: you need at least 2 of them if your mech primarily uses other weapons. You need at least 4 if this is your primary damage.
Condition 2: you need to primarily be shooting light and medium mechs.
Condition 3: if this is your primary damage/you’re a light mech you really want an active probe.
Condition 4: AI pilots need not apply**
SRMs in general fall off later into the game. This isn’t because they lose DPS but because they splatt. The slower a mech is the better it is to focus damage because it’s easier to hit the same spot each time. Plus as your mechs get bigger the primary limitation stops being the number of slots and starts being the weight that you can put into them. An AC5 may have half the DPS/tonne of an SRM 6 but an AC5 also weights 2.66 times as much. You also quickly run into slot limitations both for the weapons but also for heat sinks and ammo. An Awesome has a full set of heat sinks and still runs it’s 3 PPC hot (each PPC uses about 1.5 HPS). It would run 3 SRM 6 just as hot. This doesn’t mean SRM don’t have uses as holdout weapons for the AI* but it does mean that you don’t want to be relying on them.
However light and faster medium mechs can still avoid focus damage from large autocannons and PPC. SRM are no help here either; they have an even slower projectile speed. So if you’re not fast enough to maneuver with the target you’re just turning in circles and eating fire.
SSRM however don’t have this limitation. They always hit so long as there isn’t blocking terrain or a mech in the way. And since we are hitting a light mech we don’t even care where we hit them because SSRM fire so fast they won’t last long anyway.
So I present to you the absolutely hilarious Hero Victor
2x Heavy Rifles
3x SSRM-2
1x tag.
Ammo
Normally the hero victor has fitting issues because it’s 80 tonnes, has jump jets, and has ECM and goes 64 KPH. It still has a good amount of weight for equipment but it’s slots are 2 M energy, 2 M ballistic, 3 S missile. You can run 2x AC5 (it’s good with AC5 for the AI) but it’s punch is a bit low even with SRMs for backup. You can run 2xAC10 but that is all you get due to weight.
So I put on the heavy rifles and thought “but I only have so many shots I need something to shoot at light mechs” and lo and behold 3 SSRM2.
The Heavy Rifles are more like heavy Rofles. 2 1000+ velocity AC20 rounds per trigger pull for 16 tonnes of weight. Anything that isn’t flattened by that gets flattened by the chip damage of the SSRM-6 and anything that isn’t worth heavy rifling doesn’t stand up to the sustained damage of an SSRM-6
*an ideal lategame loadout for an AI assault mech is probably 2 PPC, a Gauss, and at least 2.5 (3 is ideal) cooling. This is because getting over 3 cooling is sufficiently hard without internal doubles and a load of free slots but also because this provides maximum immediate focus damage for a reasonable set of mechs and also because each PPC uses 1.5 HPS so you must trade weight for some more efficient damage. Plus it doesnt fall into any AI fire rate traps. After that it’s probably 2x PPC, 2x SRM4(6)- ARTIV. Well of course discounting gauss/LBX-10 SLD setups.
**the AI has issues with weapons that have a high fire rate and weapons that have a long fire duration. I should do another post about how the AI decides to fire weapons to explain this but not right now
If you mean by "fall off" as "still disturbingly powerful, but not 100% meta oppressive". Maybe.
The splat of the SRM is seriously mitigated by the fact that everyones legs get bigger (my stalker frequently deletes assaultmechs in 3-4 salvos between my 2x L chemlasers and 20 SRM missiles). It only becomes less meta oppressive since other components (like cockpits) are also getting bigger and people start being able to use stuff like 3xL Pulselasers/4xL chemlasers to instakill weapons and pilots.
But lasing for the cockpit does increase the chance that you miss and instead crack their reactor. The legs are safer if you're trying to get a clean haul of weapons (where as if you want the mech you'd better cripple it as much as possible, because otherwise you'll never be able to afford the salvage).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Gosh, doing the SRM goals for the event is a pain. Everyone else seems to have already completed it and is now rocking long range weaponry to farm brawlers, didn't have a single match that resulted in a brawl last night, just long range sniping and then a rush&crush once enough people were dead.
But hey, I got 300/1000 damage in an hour of play, and I only have to do that again with even smaller SRMs after...
Mainly comes down to patience and knowing the maps well enough to go farm that sniper who went off on their own far off flank, or getting into a team that uses the W key
Gosh, doing the SRM goals for the event is a pain. Everyone else seems to have already completed it and is now rocking long range weaponry to farm brawlers, didn't have a single match that resulted in a brawl last night, just long range sniping and then a rush&crush once enough people were dead.
But hey, I got 300/1000 damage in an hour of play, and I only have to do that again with even smaller SRMs after...
My only advice here is to be more patient. The rush&crush is typically the result of brawlers spending their armor before the Opportune Moment. An SRM brawler can frequently do a lot more lategame than early game, so picking a small-ish mech and playing it safe is frequently the right choice.
...or having ECM. Mechs like shadowcat, Arctic Wolf or Javelin-11B can do frightening amounts of damage. Javelin 11B with 4xSRM4, 3 tons of ammo, ECM, XL225 engine (remove most armor from the arms) then fill up your skill tree to hit the ECM nodes.
Overall ECM or JJs or both is pretty much always a good choice if you're using a short range weapon, and SRMs are frequently best applied in an ambush role.
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Posts
For me they are just fun and scares most people back into coverage. I'm used to not killing people running my Lights, so probably has something to do with me using them far too much.
Steam: betsuni7
I slapped two Gauss and a PPC on it for maximum “reach out and touch someone,” and gave it armor, speed tweak, and ballistic damage upgrades.
Now I have the KGC-000 for my ranged fighter which is also fast enough to dodge arty strikes in beachhead.
AS7-D for my all-rounder
ANH-1A for general midrange dakka
ANH-1X for defense/demo missions
I wanted the MAD-4A for my ranged mech but whatever.
I got a MAD-4A and am kind of disappointed with it. For standoff range it doesn’t seem to do much that an original flavor Marauder can’t do.
Not sure. But it’s very stompy and I love that about it
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Did the new DLC fix the stupid AI or bullshit enemy spawns? Or do you still need to mod the game to make it suck less?
The AI is still eh. I think slightly better* but still eh. Enemy spawns were never fucked up and are fine.
Enemies never spawned behind you unless you walked backwards into them. Enemies would already be on the map and would make towards your position. You would move forward and so they would naturally follow in behind you. Sometimes enemies would spawn horizontally to you if you entered their spawn area. But enemies would and do not ever spawn behind you.
That isn’t to say there aren’t changes. Demolition missions drop far fewer enemies and are no longer infinite and tend to have a larger initial force and first drop.
The enemy spawn mod was and is worse than vanilla.
*the AI is still very bad at shooting tanks first when it has a short range setup or when enemy mechs have a long range setup. It’s also still bad at shooting LRMs.
It’s still hands down the best feeling mechwarrior to have every been made. You feel big and heavy like a godly war machine.
My main gripes are.
1) there are no infantry and so a lot of the weapons don’t see their use case (looking at you small lasers).
2) it’s really hard to set up mechs to get them to do what you want. Not so hard that it’s impossible but AI mechs need far more cooling than a player mech would need and it’s really hard to judge that.
3) there is a lot of unexplained esoterica in how mechs perform that isn’t well documented.
4) SSRMs track too fast so you cannot shoot them around corners
We've played, and continue to play, different games, then. I have had mechs/VTOLs pop out of the aether directly in front of me. Literally last night, just *pop*, a flock of 6 VTOLs appeared 400m in front of me, in space that was unoccupied.
The game is still janky as fuck. But it's still stompy mechs that go boom and pew.
I would say most definitely not.
I am however having fun, but probably because my options for stompy Mech / business management games is pretty limited.
If you are on the fence I’d pick it (and the DLC!) up on sale.
I can definitely say every VTOL I've seen started around 1km out.
Best AI weapon appears to be PPCs (Awesomes are an incredible AI mech), but I usually have to massage weapon groups
I have no idea since I never played MW2, or if I did I honestly do not remember it.
That said, it is a whole lot better today than it was last year when I played it. All the gripes I had back when I originally played it are now gone and I'm enjoying the game. So much so that I load it up rather than MWO this past weekend (after I finished the MWO monthly event). Originally I complained about enemies seemingly appearing out of nowhere (I say seemingly since there are people who say that the enemies are already there and just move to engage), way too many vehicles and turrets over mechs (and overpowered at that), AI that was dumber and better as meat shields than actually being useful, and way too much damage from stepping on tanks and walking through exploding buildings (mainly pipes, energy sites, etc.). All of those seem to be gone or lowered and enemy patrols announce themselves before actually showing up on radar. The AI is a bit better from what I see and they can actually take out enemy mechs as well as vehicles. I agree that their LRM shooting is bad to worse, but occasionally they land a salvo or two.
I only bought the base game since I was hesitant to even give that much to PGI for the game, but glad I did and will pick up the DLC when it goes on sale.
Steam: betsuni7
It’s pretty uncommon though.
It's tough to compare them because MW2:M was so long ago. It's more like a modernized and expanded MW4:M, so if you liked that you'll like MW5.
I'd say that most (if not all) of the in-vision bullshit pop-in spawns happens during story/campaign missions. Y'know, the scripted ones that have a bit of nuance to them. The story mission where I recovered my SRM boat? I actually hit the checkpoints kind of backwards and walked through where the enemy counter-force materialized. But, since I was in a faster mech than my lancemates (one of whom was a human friend who was helping me in co-op), I hit the spawn trigger location while my 3 lancemates were still in the enemy spawn and they got to see a lance pop into existence in front of them. I would say that it was rude...but my buddy was piloting my beastly twin-Heavy Rifle Cyclops Sleipnir at the time.
[dad explodes]
Ryana: Look on the bright side kid, you get to keep all the money.
Generic Outreach start?
I fired up Career mode cause Battletech EX is slow enough that it's annoying me, and honestly MW5 is pretty fun. But I started it on my terms -- started Rasalhauge, because it was the only start I didn't recognize. (Doing a bit of research, it's an obvious teaser for a Clan Invasion expansion?) Got rid of all my mechs except for the smallest, a Locust LCT-1V and dove in.
So, uh, yeah. The game isn't designed for this, btw. Not even in the least. Even the easiest missions in the game suggest 165 tons of mech. Defense is out. Assassination is out, cause every Assassination mission I've seen so far has been a medium or two + whatever else spawns. Warzone is out.
Destruction works, because Machineguns eat buildings alive. Raid is even better cause you only have 1-3 targets per nav point -- rush in, pew pew, rush out.
So after a few of those, I was doing well enough that I picked up a Firestarter Hero that I saw -- a Torrent. 4 Flamers, 4 Machine Guns. Same story as above, except it turns out that 4 flamers will just melt a light mech (and mediums too I think?) leg off. Just... gone. But of course, I have no rep and can't salvage even light mechs yet. And ran out of flamers, but S-Lasers are even better. 4 S-Lasers and 4 Machine Guns and I have enough firepower to rival some Assault Mechs. (Ok, just the one, but, still.)
Picked up a Wolfhound, 1LL and 3MLs. Shit for heta management, but at least I could start killing bigger things -- and can snipe raid targets from further away. Slowly grinding my way up. Ended up with a Dervish at the end of my session, rounding out my lance finally. 2 LRMs, 2 SSRMs, and a few not-pulse MLs.
It gets even more obvious.
(in-game news blurb spoilers)
Well I suppose given the game's start I guess I mean generic Galatea start. Galatea (and later Outreach) being the preeminent mercenary hubs. Galatea itself was the home of the Mercenary Review Board.
If you were a Merc in the Inner Sphere then Galatea (later Outreach) would be the closest thing you had to a home.
Both worlds are fairly (relatively speaking) close to Sol.
Not sure what kind of Lance it'd start with though.
As for mechs for a Galata start… basic starting lance is about 115 t right?
Anyway we want to be semi-unique apart from the other starting lances (it’s difficult to be super unique)so let’s say…
A pretty beefy starting mech but it cannot be an enforcer or centurion or griffin. This leaves either a Wolverine or shadowhawk. I think the wolverine is usually the superior mech for players due to arm gun and dead side so let’s go SHD since this lets you give it to the AI easier if you so choose. Dervish 6M is also a possibility but I would prefer both a worse mech and a mech that didn’t require refitting to not suck.
SHD-2D / WVR-6k / DV-6M
After that is about finding complimentary mechs that are interesting and wolfhounds are super uncommon so
WLF-1
From here we have 45 tonnes left so we are stuck with a 20 and 25 t
LCT-1M
COM - 1D
All mechs that can be long or short range. Mechs that have decent but not obscene refit possibilities. And mechs that don’t show up a lot in the other sets
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Air strikes are really useful for demo missions.
But did you know that certain events like the drop ships will trigger once the garrison drops below certain percentages, and that the events will all trigger at once when you get the “you are now in range” message?
Did you know that there are some garrisons that are so small that a single air strike will almost wipe them out?
Yeah
Let’s just say that my UAC Annie limped into the exit zone on one open leg with only one UAC and 2 ML left, no ammo, and both side torsos held on with bailing wire and prayer, luckily my lancemates weren’t nearly as damaged and were able to hold aggro on the second dropship’s load long enough
On a side note, my KGC became obsolete and had to be replaced.
I have still never seen a Marauder II anywhere in game.
Are you in career mode?
Yep
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Meanwhile I could be fielding an entire lance of Annihilators right now with what I’ve seen on market.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Nah, they're more like
"So. I hear you like double-gauss headshots."
I hear career mode allows you to play the Campaign as a normal mission chain. Doing those last few missions without
would be a feat in and of itself, I tell you what.
So after playing around with the trebuchet-LG a lot I have a newfound respect for SSRMs as the conditional king of SRMs.
Condition 1: you need at least 2 of them if your mech primarily uses other weapons. You need at least 4 if this is your primary damage.
Condition 2: you need to primarily be shooting light and medium mechs.
Condition 3: if this is your primary damage/you’re a light mech you really want an active probe.
Condition 4: AI pilots need not apply**
SRMs in general fall off later into the game. This isn’t because they lose DPS but because they splatt. The slower a mech is the better it is to focus damage because it’s easier to hit the same spot each time. Plus as your mechs get bigger the primary limitation stops being the number of slots and starts being the weight that you can put into them. An AC5 may have half the DPS/tonne of an SRM 6 but an AC5 also weights 2.66 times as much. You also quickly run into slot limitations both for the weapons but also for heat sinks and ammo. An Awesome has a full set of heat sinks and still runs it’s 3 PPC hot (each PPC uses about 1.5 HPS). It would run 3 SRM 6 just as hot. This doesn’t mean SRM don’t have uses as holdout weapons for the AI* but it does mean that you don’t want to be relying on them.
However light and faster medium mechs can still avoid focus damage from large autocannons and PPC. SRM are no help here either; they have an even slower projectile speed. So if you’re not fast enough to maneuver with the target you’re just turning in circles and eating fire.
SSRM however don’t have this limitation. They always hit so long as there isn’t blocking terrain or a mech in the way. And since we are hitting a light mech we don’t even care where we hit them because SSRM fire so fast they won’t last long anyway.
So I present to you the absolutely hilarious Hero Victor
2x Heavy Rifles
3x SSRM-2
1x tag.
Ammo
Normally the hero victor has fitting issues because it’s 80 tonnes, has jump jets, and has ECM and goes 64 KPH. It still has a good amount of weight for equipment but it’s slots are 2 M energy, 2 M ballistic, 3 S missile. You can run 2x AC5 (it’s good with AC5 for the AI) but it’s punch is a bit low even with SRMs for backup. You can run 2xAC10 but that is all you get due to weight.
So I put on the heavy rifles and thought “but I only have so many shots I need something to shoot at light mechs” and lo and behold 3 SSRM2.
The Heavy Rifles are more like heavy Rofles. 2 1000+ velocity AC20 rounds per trigger pull for 16 tonnes of weight. Anything that isn’t flattened by that gets flattened by the chip damage of the SSRM-6 and anything that isn’t worth heavy rifling doesn’t stand up to the sustained damage of an SSRM-6
*an ideal lategame loadout for an AI assault mech is probably 2 PPC, a Gauss, and at least 2.5 (3 is ideal) cooling. This is because getting over 3 cooling is sufficiently hard without internal doubles and a load of free slots but also because this provides maximum immediate focus damage for a reasonable set of mechs and also because each PPC uses 1.5 HPS so you must trade weight for some more efficient damage. Plus it doesnt fall into any AI fire rate traps. After that it’s probably 2x PPC, 2x SRM4(6)- ARTIV. Well of course discounting gauss/LBX-10 SLD setups.
**the AI has issues with weapons that have a high fire rate and weapons that have a long fire duration. I should do another post about how the AI decides to fire weapons to explain this but not right now
The splat of the SRM is seriously mitigated by the fact that everyones legs get bigger (my stalker frequently deletes assaultmechs in 3-4 salvos between my 2x L chemlasers and 20 SRM missiles). It only becomes less meta oppressive since other components (like cockpits) are also getting bigger and people start being able to use stuff like 3xL Pulselasers/4xL chemlasers to instakill weapons and pilots.
But lasing for the cockpit does increase the chance that you miss and instead crack their reactor. The legs are safer if you're trying to get a clean haul of weapons (where as if you want the mech you'd better cripple it as much as possible, because otherwise you'll never be able to afford the salvage).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
But hey, I got 300/1000 damage in an hour of play, and I only have to do that again with even smaller SRMs after...
My only advice here is to be more patient. The rush&crush is typically the result of brawlers spending their armor before the Opportune Moment. An SRM brawler can frequently do a lot more lategame than early game, so picking a small-ish mech and playing it safe is frequently the right choice.
...or having ECM. Mechs like shadowcat, Arctic Wolf or Javelin-11B can do frightening amounts of damage. Javelin 11B with 4xSRM4, 3 tons of ammo, ECM, XL225 engine (remove most armor from the arms) then fill up your skill tree to hit the ECM nodes.
Overall ECM or JJs or both is pretty much always a good choice if you're using a short range weapon, and SRMs are frequently best applied in an ambush role.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden