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Cynic Jester posted:Major Tactics is probably the best ability in the game and by a huge margin. Not only is it better as you level, because called shot mastery is the single biggest increase in your ability to core you can get from any source, but once you start trucking around with 4x Heavies or Assault, being able to shed stability damage without using an action is huge. If I was redoing my run, I'd have Master Tactician on all my pilots, and Minor Gunnery on LRM pilots and Bulwark on frontliners. As you hit mid to late game, relying on evasion for damage mitigation is silly. And Bulwark has the advantage of protecting you against having your head shot out by a lucky AC20 hit. And this doesn't even get into how huge +1 initiative is at all weights.
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May 7, 2018 16:29
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Reserving with Master Tactician immediately sheds one bar of Stability.
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May 7, 2018 16:30
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Cynic Jester posted:Major Tactics is probably the best ability in the game and by a huge margin. Not only is it better as you level, because called shot mastery is the single biggest increase in your ability to core you can get from any source, but once you start trucking around with 4x Heavies or Assault, being able to shed stability damage without using an action is huge. If I was redoing my run, I'd have Master Tactician on all my pilots, and Minor Gunnery on LRM pilots and Bulwark on frontliners. As you hit mid to late game, relying on evasion for damage mitigation is silly. And Bulwark has the advantage of protecting you against having your head shot out by a lucky AC20 hit. And this doesn't even get into how huge +1 initiative is at all weights. Major tactics is an OK skill. But being able bypassing Bulwark and other DR status effects is huge. You worry a lot less about stability when you just popp'ed off an AC20s into two different targets, by passing their 50% DR and killing them.
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May 7, 2018 16:35
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Knocked down mechs should lose LOS imo
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May 7, 2018 16:44
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Every skill is good except juggernaut and ace piloting on a slow mech
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May 7, 2018 16:44
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Major gunnery falls off (but is still good) because by late game you've got more than one big gun. Firing two AC20s at half damage each is generally better than one at full damage as you get two chances at hitting the head. And you want to split fire less to take down assaults, so you get less mileage out of secondary target breaching shots too. Ace Pilot does NOT let you melee then move, or shoot then brace (brace gets replaced by 'done' in the UI). It's kind of situational, and really wants to be able to couple with Breaching Shot so you can have someone hopping around with a single gauss rifle or something. Obviously that's not possible, but with the Guts tree skills likely to be swapped in a forthcoming patch it might happen to Gunnery too. Major tactics is a lot more valuable than it may first seem.
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May 7, 2018 16:45
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A half damage AC20 hitting the head still wont kill the head (unless youre fighting half armor mechs or something) so breaching shot is better in that specific scenario
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May 7, 2018 16:53
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Nullkigan posted:
Major Tactics is obscene. You can start fights with max evasion from jump jets and brace, reducing enemy damage to nearly nothing while you reserve until after their turn. Then you get two turns in a row against equal tonnage. With called shots to the center torso you can very easily core out twice your number before they get another chance to act. Multishot/breaching shot is overrated because you can't use called shot with it.
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May 7, 2018 16:53
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Xae posted:Major tactics is an OK skill. The amount of times I need to shoot into someone with 50% DR is minimal, as LRMs remove bracing just fine thanks to knockdowns and lets me use called shot mastery to core even assaults with dual AC20s, instead of doing 120 to two different targets, which often ends up hitting a location I don't care about. Edit: KPC_Mammon knows whats up.
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May 7, 2018 16:54
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Called shot would be a lot less overpowered if high morale wasn't glitched to be permanent. But it is, which means called shots are effectively free.
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May 7, 2018 16:57
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tactlessbastard posted:Knocked down mechs should lose LOS imo I thought they did? I was playing a story mission yesterday and I accidentally blundered into a 1v4 when Dekker's Shadow Hawk got too far ahead of the rest of my lance, and when he got knocked down I lost sight of the hostiles I'd been barraging with LRMs while my pair of brawlers caught up. Maybe it just reduces sight range or something but I could have sworn it affected LOS somehow. (his mech did not survive that mission but, shockingly, he did, just ended up in sickbay for nearly three months).
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May 7, 2018 16:58
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tactlessbastard posted:Knocked down mechs should lose LOS imo They lose some sightrange I think. But it isn't a huge amount. I'm fine with them not becoming blind but beyond having called shots be easier falling over isn't as bad as it could be for spotters.
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May 7, 2018 16:58
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I think there is a role for one gun 2 / guts 1 on a team but yeah endgame I find myself using that one Gunner, two guts 1 tactics 2, and one Gunner 1/tac 2. I might start using a piloting 2/ tac 1 spotter again if I can ever find a stalker to make into a lurmboat. Highlanders, crabs, Atlantes I can find, no goddam stalkers.
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May 7, 2018 16:59
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Colonial Air Force posted:The one with a weird past about a girl he's obsessed with. I found one who's got this noir story about being a detective chasing a criminal for so long he's forgotten her face and just wanders believing he'll know her when he sees her. I assume, contrary to whatever grimdark romance the author intended, that it's Carmen Sandiego.
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May 7, 2018 17:01
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I'm close to restarting because I made Glitch Gunnery 2/Guts 1 instead of Gunnery 1/Tactics 2 and I feel like I have failed her. Luckily the game isn't really hard enough to warrant worrying over only having good instead of optimal skills, but still...
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May 7, 2018 17:04
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When I'm using my swarm of garbage mechwarriors with no skills, it's not the bullwark/breaching shots/etc... I wish I had but the passives: sprint, heat threshold and the likes.
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May 7, 2018 17:07
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Wizard Styles posted:I'm close to restarting because I made Glitch Gunnery 2/Guts 1 instead of Gunnery 1/Tactics 2 and I feel like I have failed her. Yeah, my Glitch was Gunnery 1/Piloting 2 and I still used her the entire game. I wished she had Tactics 2 all the god drat time, but it still wasn't enough to get me to switch her out. My Commander also had the same skill setup because that combo is super good before you get into heavies and start rocking called shot mastery, but c'est la vie.
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May 7, 2018 17:09
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LostCosmonaut posted:Just finished the SLDF salvage mission, got lucky and killed the Battlemaster's pilot so my A-team lance is now Highlander, Battlemaster, Catapult, and Grasshopper. That's a lot of heat sinks
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May 7, 2018 17:30
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Nullkigan posted:Ace Pilot does NOT let you melee then move, or shoot then brace (brace gets replaced by 'done' in the UI). It's kind of situational, and really wants to be able to couple with Breaching Shot so you can have someone hopping around with a single gauss rifle or something. Obviously that's not possible, but with the Guts tree skills likely to be swapped in a forthcoming patch it might happen to Gunnery too. It's really good for stuff like firestarters with max 25 damage s-lasers. You reserve to phase 1 and use your light last. Once everyone else has gone, you jump behind your target of choice, do a called shot on their back for something like 150 damage. Then you end your turn and you do a second called shot for another 150 damage, then you jump jet back out of LOS or back up to 6 evasion. KPC_Mammon posted:Called shot would be a lot less overpowered if high morale wasn't glitched to be permanent. Even without that glitch, you can get +3 communication systems in all your mechs to have a pretty steady supply of called shots, especially if you do it smartly as every unit you kill brings you back up to sufficient morale. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I think there is a role for one gun 2 / guts 1 on a team but yeah endgame I find myself using that one Gunner, two guts 1 tactics 2, and one Gunner 1/tac 2. My main lance is all gun 2 / guts 1 and I just stand around multi-targeting everything. You can breach shot every single turn while still firing all your weapons. Or you can put lrms on every mech and constantly knock over any mech you choose every round while still shooting normally. It's pretty op. Not to mention your whole lance takes 50% damage so its like having 8 mechs worth of hp. Dramicus fucked around with this message at 17:43 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 17:40
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Cynic Jester posted:As you hit mid to late game, relying on evasion for damage mitigation is silly. Ace gets more than that. I'm relying more on post-shot ducking behind a wall or post-shot brace than evasion for mitigation, both of which are at least as, if not more effective than Bulwark at this. Shooting, then ducking behind a wall also seems to encourage the AI to make poor decisions, and lets me catch opfor units more than Tactics did. The cost is, bulwark seems like a redundant pick (which sucks, because Outrider is the coolest name), sensor lock is underwhelming, leaving multi-target as basically the only semi-good pick. BurntCornMuffin fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 18:11
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Did the last update include any performance fixes? The game is running waaay better today than it was when I last played it a few days ago.
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May 7, 2018 18:27
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This thread has been wrong about evasion for 401 pages. Good luck out there, pilots.
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May 7, 2018 18:30
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Zigmidge posted:This thread has been wrong about evasion for 401 pages. But...there's 301 pages.
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May 7, 2018 18:32
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BurntCornMuffin posted:But...there's 301 pages. I, too, am a fan of shoot-and-scoot, even in the late game. Maximum jump jets on everything for the win!
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May 7, 2018 18:38
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Nullkigan posted:Major gunnery falls off (but is still good) because by late game you've got more than one big gun. Firing two AC20s at half damage each is generally better than one at full damage as you get two chances at hitting the head. That's not how math works. Firing 2 AC/20s for half damage halves your chance of taking out the head because you now have twice as many chances to miss. And if you don't hit with both shots the head will stay intact.
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May 7, 2018 18:41
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Yeah evasion falls off if you're just trying to run circles around a cluster of Assaults, sure. When you're darting between hills and walls though, evasion makes your already tough to get an angle on mech even harder to hit. I have a light mech with a Rangefinder with my team of Assaults, and he almost never gets hit.
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May 7, 2018 18:44
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BurntCornMuffin posted:Ace gets more than that. I'm relying more on post-shot ducking behind a wall or post-shot brace than evasion for mitigation, both of which are at least as, if not more effective than Bulwark at this. You can't shoot and then Brace on a pilot with Ace but not Bulwark. I tested this with Glitch (Evasive/Ace/Multi) before she died.
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May 7, 2018 18:47
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Q_res posted:You can't shoot and then Brace on a pilot with Ace but not Bulwark. I tested this with Glitch (Evasive/Ace/Multi) before she died. I stand corrected then. Outriders aren't as redundant as I thought.
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May 7, 2018 18:52
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Evasion needs more both for the AI and for the Player. For the AI, Evasion is a nonentity. I've got 25% chance to hit base, plus another 25% chance to hit off my weapons. You can have max Evasion pips and I'm still going to shred you. Yeah that's a lategame thing, but throughout the game I'm getting better and better at hitting dudes with my weapons. Even by midgame I was straddling a +30% chance to hit for a long time. For the Player, you run into the same issue. If the AI has high Gunnery, they will hit you through your Evasion pips because they come with a base chance to hit that overrides it. If the AI has a +++ weapon, they'll hit you through your Evasion because they have a high chance to hit. The more you play the game, the more you'll get AI with high Gunnery + +++ weapons. You also have to think about the numbers side of things. The AI will always outnumber you, so all your mechs have to be prepared to handle at the very least 2v1, usually 4v1 scenarios. The second you get that many AI into the field, Evasion stops being viable. The enemy light/medium/heavy mechs will take out your first few pips ( or will just melee you ), then you'll have no defense against the other 6 mechs that have turns coming. I keep seeing people talk about their side builds and I genuinely don't get it at all. The only worthwhile skills in the game are MT/BS/BW/TM. Everything else is either situational at best or a joke. Like I get it, you do well with Sensor Lock on your guys that gave up MT for TM, because you can LRM boat a few dudes as they straddle up to the fight, but it's still barely in the running against powerhouses like MT/BW.
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May 7, 2018 19:04
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All of those words and you ignore the most overpowered skill of all: being next to a big rock
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May 7, 2018 19:08
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Your math only makes sense if you're standing around in a battlefield with no cover.
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May 7, 2018 19:10
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"Evasion is good if the enemy can't shoot at you anyway." Isn't exactly the argument I would have gone with, but you do you.
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May 7, 2018 19:16
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Evasion seems really good at mitigating incoming damage from missile spam. Less good once you get into knife fighting range
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May 7, 2018 19:18
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speaking as someone using evasion and jump jets to matrix dodge SRM carrier salvoes, I question anyone who thinks it's a bad idea.
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May 7, 2018 19:18
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evasion isn't tenable in the late game because eventually the AI will get lucky and put a 0.05% AC/20 into your head and you'll have to hose your level 9000 pilot out of the cockpit.
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May 7, 2018 19:19
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Tarezax posted:Evasion seems really good at mitigating incoming damage from missile spam. Less good once you get into knife fighting range It still works, but you have to keep it up. Jumping every turn can get hot, so you do have to build a mech for it. Bulwark is simpler, in that regard, you just stand there and slug it out. But you concede positioning and facing to the enemy by doing so; evasion you do not concede those so take advantage. I don't have to call every shot to get into the juicy structure I want if I just keep jumping into the right angles and deadsiding appropriately to rotate armor so they don't get in my structure. You can make a heavy or assault with high armor last a really, really long time when they have to try to pound through a thousand armor to get anywhere. Reiterpallasch posted:evasion isn't tenable in the late game because eventually the AI will get lucky and put a 0.05% AC/20 into your head and you'll have to hose your level 9000 pilot out of the cockpit. uh by that math you admit the skill works 99.95% of the time, so i'm not sure this says what you think it does. If we're going to try to nitpick low order probabilities, how about this: your bulwarked mech will eat enough half-damage LRMs to bring it into headcap range because it's taking 100% of the shots instead of evading some percentage of them, therefore it's not tenable late game because eventually the AI will get lucky and put a half-damage AC/20 into your weakened head. or just breaching shot your CT, they get it too.  both are perfectly good and fine, neither is perfect. Psion fucked around with this message at 19:27 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 19:22
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Astroniomix posted:That's not how math works. Firing 2 AC/20s for half damage halves your chance of taking out the head because you now have twice as many chances to miss. And if you don't hit with both shots the head will stay intact. It's worse for my example than you're suggesting if getting a headchop is the goal. You've got two chances to hit the head and injure the pilot instead of one, but as the head is such a low probability hit location you're vastly less likely (not just half) to headcap and score an outright kill, and there's even anti-clustering stuff for hits to the head (though that's mostly missiles I think?). I find the chance of getting a head hit for the +1 pilot damage is more valuable than a Called Shot Mastery Breaching Shot in the majority of cases. You're are right that the AC 20 and Gauss Rifle are somewhat exempt from this, as they're headchoppers out of the box, but for almost all the other big guns like AC 10s, Large Lasers, and PPCs it's sensible. That said, it's rare to be in AC20 range with Breaching Shot and Called Shot Mastery without another few hundred damage in SRMs and lasers lying around, at which point you're still looking at 100-120 damage with 16% chance (<2% in my experience) of an outright kill versus say 100 damage (AC 20 and 2 SRM 6) with a something like a 30+% chance of causing a pilot injury from spamming more weapons. The 16% worked out for me once in about 50 hours, but the 30% works for me pretty much every battle. Basically I'm approaching this from the perspective that headchopping is super unreliable for me (though there's a demolisher tranining facility out there somewhere that majors in it...) and therefore can be ignored, whilst I want to maximise my overall damage and damage to pilots. Earlier in the game, where you pretty much do have just one big ticket gun and say a large laser can headchop because everything is set to 25% armour, breaching shot is more useful because not only do you get the headchop chance but the rest of the body parts are also lightly armoured and you're not giving away much of an opportunity cost in potential pilot hits.
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May 7, 2018 19:25
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uh fyi bulwark still works if you rotate in place
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May 7, 2018 19:30
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just sayin
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May 7, 2018 19:31
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If you don’t powergame correctly, I will post about it on the Internet.
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