[The E]

Escort missions are the worst in this game, especially later on when your Mechs can't really keep up with Vehicles at all.

[crizza]

Time to savescum...
I think I can do better if I don't use called shots to the head and keep my distance...
Also, my current lance(?):


[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]

[Spoon]

Finished the main campaign. Final Lance loadout was 3 Highlanders and a Stalker (2 HGN-733P, 1 HGN-732b, and the Stalker turned into something closely resembling a Longbow, with the LRMs upgraded to LRM20++ and the large lasers stripped out for more LRM ammo and heat sinks). It feels soooo good to see a Mech pop up and basically be able to decide when and where that thing is going to faceplant....

Now I'm kinda torn between restarting the campaign, or playing on to hunt for more King Crab parts (I only saw one of them so far). It's also going to be interesting to see how viable my unit is in the absence of the regular cash infusions provided by the story missions.

Also finished it today. My final lance was a Banshee, two Highlanders and a Battlemaster. The Banshee had maximum armor and was just nearly indestructible. Fun times.

I never saw a Stalker in my whole campaign, until the contract I took after finishing the last story mission. It came along with a king crabbo, but as I was midway into that contract, my pc did a bsod.
Damnit.


Glitch was MVP.
My maincharacter spend most of his time in medbay, taking all the hits for the team. Maybe thats why I took relatively few casualities.

Spoiler:

The last two missions were laughable easy. In the second to last mission, the AI spends so much time, carefully spreading out the damage on the base turrets, that they never inflicted any kind of damage on my mechs. The two lances that drop managed to kill a whole two turrets...
Then the lance vs lance battle is nothing you haven't already done a hundred times before that... so uh, cakewalk. I had the crabbo surrounded and legged, but I didn't get a single bit of salvage from it. I feel robbed.

[Aesaar]

Spoon: No ****ing way did we both pick the same callsign and skills for our mains.

[Spoon]

Spoon: No ****ing way did we both pick the same callsign and skills for our mains.

I dont know, maybe? I don't think I actually posted a screenshot with my dude's ugly mug in this thread yet.


(For comparison, Glitch has 58 deployments, 13 injuries, 75 mech kills and 46 other kills. Samurai spend far too much time napping in medbay.)

I picked a Draconis Combine background so I figured I'd go full nippon banzai with the guy.

[Aesaar]

I'm wrong.  Guess the game has Apex in the list of generated mechwarrior callsigns.  I got the colored markers mixed up.

[Spoon]

I'm wrong.  Guess the game has Apex in the list of generated mechwarrior callsigns.  I got the colored markers mixed up.

It's one of those ronin unique characters.
You can have two Apex's in your company then 

[crizza]

How viable are double PPCs?

[Mikes]

Finished the main campaign. Final Lance loadout was 3 Highlanders and a Stalker (2 HGN-733P, 1 HGN-732b, and the Stalker turned into something closely resembling a Longbow, with the LRMs upgraded to LRM20++ and the large lasers stripped out for more LRM ammo and heat sinks). It feels soooo good to see a Mech pop up and basically be able to decide when and where that thing is going to faceplant....

Now I'm kinda torn between restarting the campaign, or playing on to hunt for more King Crab parts (I only saw one of them so far). It's also going to be interesting to see how viable my unit is in the absence of the regular cash infusions provided by the story missions.

Also finished it today. My final lance was a Banshee, two Highlanders and a Battlemaster. The Banshee had maximum armor and was just nearly indestructible. Fun times.

I never saw a Stalker in my whole campaign, until the contract I took after finishing the last story mission. It came along with a king crabbo, but as I was midway into that contract, my pc did a bsod.
Damnit.

Glitch was MVP.
My maincharacter spend most of his time in medbay, taking all the hits for the team. Maybe thats why I took relatively few casualities.

Spoiler:

The last two missions were laughable easy. In the second to last mission, the AI spends so much time, carefully spreading out the damage on the base turrets, that they never inflicted any kind of damage on my mechs. The two lances that drop managed to kill a whole two turrets...
Then the lance vs lance battle is nothing you haven't already done a hundred times before that... so uh, cakewalk. I had the crabbo surrounded and legged, but I didn't get a single bit of salvage from it. I feel robbed.

Final Lance: Atlas, Highlander, King Crab, Stalker.

The Stalker with a full LRM Loadout is indeed incredibly fun. I crammed 4x LRM15 in there, all with extra stability damage. Basically "2 Catapults in one Mech" ;-)

I'd rate the Highlander with Jumpjets even higher though. Solid firepower ....... and if it's needed, or if desperate, there s that 200+ damage DFA attack.

Mech with the most kills in my lance was definitely the King Crab however .... Dual AC20 with +20 extra damage each and a LRM15.
Basically one shot kills up to heavy mechs with center torso called shot, wich gives you the morale back instantly due to the mech kill .... i.e. BAM dead, next target please ..... (If not instakilled, center torso is still banged up a lot and between the 2xAC20 and the LRMs there s enough stability damage to finish up with a knock down and followup called shot on pretty much anything but the most heavily armored assaults.)



P.S. For disabling mechs for salvage I found the most reliable way not to be headshots, but to position to the sides of the mech (to avoid center torso hits) and blast away with as much stability damage as you can bring. Make them fall down repeatedly (+1 wound) and eventually blow the side torsos off (+1 wound) reliably takes out the pilot eventually (usually 4 wounds total), while leaving the mech salvagable.

How viable are double PPCs?

Dual PPCs can work...  but I would heavily recommend ones with +15 or better +30 stability damage. Then they're ok. I ran a triple PPC Awesome for a long time and it did just fine. In general you are usually better off pairing a single PPC with with an autocannon or LRMs imho though - I had quite a lot of fun with a PPC + AC20 Cataphract for a while for example (long range potshots with some extra stability damage + short range killing power) - or better, going straight for AC + LRM/SRM if heat is becoming an issue.

[Spoon]

I tried dual ppc on a grasshopper once, found it a bit underwhelming.
That kingcrab sounds amazing. Wish I could get me one. But yeah, highlanders with jumpjets are amazing.

P.S. For disabling mechs for salvage I found the most reliable way not to be headshots, but to position to the sides of the mech (to avoid center torso hits) and blast away with as much stability damage as you can bring. Make them fall down repeatedly (+1 wound) and eventually blow the side torsos off (+1 wound) reliably takes out the pilot eventually (usually 4 wounds total), while leaving the mech salvagable.

Knocking out a leg is also a guaranteed knock down, and leaves the mech with 1 less stability for future knock downs.

[Aesaar]

AC/10 or AC/20 + LRM is a very good combo. LRMs combo with everything pretty well.  LRMs are very good in this game.

[Spoon]

King crab get, with some spare doubleheat sinks from the Atlas.
That contract was kind of funny, cause it was on a cold tundra planet but the enemy lance managed to repeatedly overheat both of its stalkers and the kingcrab. Sure made it easy to knock the crab out without doing much damage to it.

AC/10 or AC/20 + LRM is a very good combo. LRMs combo with everything pretty well.  LRMs are very good in this game.

I find almost all weapons range from good to decent. The only exceptions being large lasers, which are kind of awful. And ppc's I feel are also kind of mediocre. Both weapons generate absurd amounts of heat and are heavy to boot. ER LL are super bad, super heaty and the extra range is almost never useful. LRM's are better for a long range option in every way.

For example, replace the one large laser on the stock kingcrab loadout with 4 medium lasers, and you've got one extra spare tonnage to play with. You've now increased your damage output significantly and can fit an extra heatsink or add more armor.

[0rph3u5]

PPCs, and by extension dual PPCs, are more a menace against lights and mediums - when you have tactician hanging back and stripping those evade charges with sensor lock... by the endgame everything is just so armored....


Also, my campaign broke - timeline is no longer advancing, so I am stuck without being able to go to the next contract...
... which might be good as well considering I trashed my story-Highlander (gauss is gone, so are all double heat sinks) and none of the mechs I got are filling the void currently

[The E]

Post campaign update:
-Salvage, in particular Mech salvage, is going to be your primary source of income.
-The King Crab, when upgraded with +Stability and +Damage or +Accuracy ACs, is a holy terror
-Tactics 9 is insane

[The E]

... which might be good as well considering I trashed my story-Highlander (gauss is gone, so are all double heat sinks) and none of the mechs I got are filling the void currently

The HGN is one of the few mechs that degrades pretty well. In place of the Gauss, you can fit an AC/10 (which is almost as good) and more armor.

[Buckshee Rounds]

Anyone got any franken-builds they'd like to share?

I wanted to make the Spider actually useful by putting a ppc on it. Had to scrape off all the armour from the arms and back.

To absolutely no surprise it is ****ing awful - overheats like a ***** and without jump jets it can't get to where I need it. I'd say it's possibly worse than stock, but it does occasionally get a nice shot in.

PPC Jenner oth is actually really fun. Same armour as stock and keeps the jumpjets too. LRM Jenner is not too bad either.

EDIT - tried a glass cannon Jenner in skirmish with almost no armour, 1 ppc and 1 lrm 10. It dies instantly but dear god it's fun.

[Firesteel]

My favorite at the moment (partially because the C1 is a myth) is the K2 without machine guns and more heatsinks/armor, or how I played it when I was playing MWO. It can fire PPCs for a hilariously long time now even in the desert and is pretty damn good at taking legs out.

That said heavy mechs are still a rarity where I am in the campaign.

[Mikes]

My favorite at the moment (partially because the C1 is a myth) is the K2 without machine guns and more heatsinks/armor, or how I played it when I was playing MWO. It can fire PPCs for a hilariously long time now even in the desert and is pretty damn good at taking legs out.

That said heavy mechs are still a rarity where I am in the campaign.

Yeah at that point in the campaign, where you face a lot of mediums/lights dual PPCs really work great. I even still liked the triple PPC awesome, which was the first assault mech I got.
It really is awesome against mediums and even most heavies. Triple PPC with +30 stability was a neat combo with the LRM Boat Catapult. Especially since that awesome can actually TANK and do it frigging well at that stage of the game.

[BlueFlames]

[/lurk]

I might have racked up 140 hours in two weeks.  What is sleep?

Deep into the post-campaign, I'm developing a new love of the Grasshopper.  I've got one loaded to the gills with medium and small lasers, jump jets, and heat sinks.  With that loadout and Dekker at the stick, I send it bounding around behind the enemy to slag rear armor.  Single-volley assassinations of heavy and assault mechs are a thing™.  With the Ace Pilot ability, if the first volley doesn't get you, the second one will, before it leaps to safety.

In a base capture mission, I had my three assault mechs advancing on the base, with Dekker wandering about on the left flank in a Grasshopper, looking for some backs to stab.  Unbeknownst to me, this was a mission with no mechs on the map, and a dropship reinforcement trigger set at a fixed distance from the objective.  When the assault mechs triggered the reinforcements, the lance dropped directly on top of Dekker.  Dekker got three kills--all of them mechs.  My assault mechs were really just there to mop up the base turrets.

I suspect humans are better about dealing with flankers than the AI.  Still, it's fun.

Escort missions are the worst in this game, especially later on when your Mechs can't really keep up with Vehicles at all.

I learned pretty early on to try to identify the convoy extraction point, before spawning the convoy.  (There's often a landing pad or a place where the snow is inexplicably melted away or some other visible indicator.)  If you can get your slower mechs posted up around the extraction point, before having your fastest mech (or LRM boat) spawns the APCs, then keeping up becomes a non-issue.  It would be nice if the APCs would stay behind your lance, though, as the in-game dialogue implies they will, so that it wouldn't be necessary to find a wacky metagame solution.

It also seems like the hostile force will use lighter mechs than it will use on other mission types with the same difficulty rating, so you may be able to get away with using lighter, faster mechs for escort missions than the rating might suggest.

[Buckshee Rounds]

On salvage - I'm not 100% sure this is an absolute rule, but generally speaking taking out both legs on a mech yields only 2 salvage parts. Incapacitating the pilot seems to usually yield 3 possible salvage, even if the mech gets stripped of both torsos and a leg. I've had this happen on a few missions now and gotten some nice mechs out of it. Helped my restarted campaign at any rate.