Battletech - Urban Warcrimes: So quoth the RVN-3L, Arrow IV.

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Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

How do you determine which weapon system will fire first? That is, is it possible to arrange to fire a TAG/NARC first in a volley so that subsequent shots will get the bonus? I'm still using a Raven with two TAGs as a spotter but frankly I'm starting to feel the lack of firepower in that 4th slot and wouldn't mind using TAGs elsewhere.

e: Also do multiple TAG sources stack?

# ? Dec 4, 2019 15:21

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 14, 2024 03:33

Cease to Hope: Dec 12, 2011

i am writing 6000 words on how to build mechs, which is clearly normal behavior. i don't know why i'm like this

anakha posted:

Filter for the following:

* Battlefield: Actuators & Gyros
* Chemical: Missile weapons, Flamers, Inferno racks
* Electronics: Laser weaponry and TTS computers
* Industrial: Cockpit, Heat Banks and Exchangers
* Mining: Autocannons. Base models guaranteed, Heavy Metal variants randomly rolled.
* Research: PPCs of all types, COILs, Narc beacons, TAG lasers, ECM and Active Probe gear.
* Star League: Lostech.

put this in the OP, i've been looking for this everywhere

Ravenfood posted:

How do you determine which weapon system will fire first? That is, is it possible to arrange to fire a TAG/NARC first in a volley so that subsequent shots will get the bonus? I'm still using a Raven with two TAGs as a spotter but frankly I'm starting to feel the lack of firepower in that 4th slot and wouldn't mind using TAGs elsewhere.

e: Also do multiple TAG sources stack?

weapons fire in descending order of damage, so you can't ever benefit from your own tag/narc. and multiples don't stack. two tags seems kinda useless

# ? Dec 4, 2019 16:03

RBA Starblade: Apr 28, 2008; Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

What's Star League Advanced? Just even better lostech?

# ? Dec 4, 2019 16:04

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Cease to Hope posted:

i am writing 6000 words on how to build mechs, which is clearly normal behavior. i don't know why i'm like this

Giant robot enthusiasm is like that ant fungus except that you eventually turn part plastic

# ? Dec 4, 2019 16:05

Cease to Hope: Dec 12, 2011

RBA Starblade posted:

What's Star League Advanced? Just even better lostech?

"advanced" means you're more likely to get + weapons. "lostech" is stuff like ER lasers, ultra ACs, and such.

Lawman 0 posted:

Giant robot enthusiasm is like that ant fungus except that you eventually turn part plastic

# ? Dec 4, 2019 16:09

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

We really need an OP update and a new thread title with :regd10:

pun of some kind.

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:04

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

sean10mm posted:

We really need an OP update and a new thread title with pun of some kind.

Hell yeah

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:12

Organ Fiend: May 21, 2007; custom title

Battletech - Heavy Metal: Slam In The Back Of My Dragulatlas
Battletech - Heavy Metal: Ride The Man Made Lightning
Battletech - Heavy Metal: Overkill
Battletech - Heavy Metal: Skeletons of (Starleague) Society
Battletech - Heavy Metal: Du Hast Mech

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:26

InAndOutBrennan: Dec 11, 2008

Black Knight Of The Family

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:32

Cease to Hope: Dec 12, 2011

How to build a mech! Because I am a goddamned lunatic, here's six thousand godforsaken words on how to build robots in this stupid game.

Pick a mech

tl;dr: Slower and heavier are almost always better.

There are four weight classes: light (20-35 tons), medium (40-55t), heavy (60t-75t), and assault (80-100t). Lighter mechs get higher initiative and a bonus to avoid attacks based on their weight class, and they are generally faster, while heavier mechs have a higher armor cap, more internal structure HP, and usually have more free tonnage to fit weapons, armor, and equipment.

I stripped all equipment and armor from a Marauder, a 75 ton mech, and it left me with this much usable tonnage.

Mechs have a specific tonnage, but much of that tonnage is fixed in place, representing the unchangeable weight of the mech's skeleton, basic systems, fusion reactor, and engine. In general, heavier mechs are better*, because more usable tonnage is more powerful than the benefits of lighter weight classes.

However, usable tonnage doesn't always correspond directly to the mech's total weight, because faster mechs have more weight set aside for the unchangeable engine. For example, a Centurion, a 50t mech with a max speed of 120m per turn, has 31.5 usable tons, while a Trebuchet, a 50t mech with a max speed of 140m per turn, only has 26.5t usable. Because of the (entirely undocumented) diminishing returns on greater speed for heavier mechs, relatively fast mechs on the low end of their weight class tend to be pretty inefficient. Cicadas (very fast 40t mechs) are entirely useless, Dragons and Quickdraws (both 60t heavy mechs) are marginal at best, and Banshees (95t assault mechs) are nearly useless gimmicks except for the slower BNC-3S variant.

Some mechs also have lighter internals due to high-tech materials, leading to extra free tonnage. This includes the spoilermechs from the story (Griffin 2N, Black Knight 6b, Highlander 732B, and the Atlas D-HT), as well as the Annihilator and Bull Shark.

You don't have to memorize all of this. This chart has all of the relevant info. The important column is "Usable Tonnage"; more is better.

It's possible to build a light lance that is viable from the beginning of the game all the way to the end, but it's a hyperspecialized playstyle that I'm not going to cover in this guide.

The mechs added in the DLC all have fixed equipment that can't be removed or permanently destroyed. I'll talk about what that means in practice when I talk about specific builds.

Besides its weight, every weapon and piece of equipment has a volume, measured in how many critical slots it takes up in your mech. The head has one slot, each leg and the center torso have four, the side torsos have 10 each, and the arms have eight each. This isn't a big limitation when you're picking your weapon loadout, but sometimes it limits the usefulness of head- or center-torso-mounted weapon hardpoints.

Don't die

This is how I arrange armor on a common 55t mech. If you wanted more armor, you could drop the ML, or switch out a LL for a couple of MLs and use the spare tonnage on armor and heat sinks.

tl;dr: Max armor on the front torsos and any section with anything important.

The first thing you'll want to do is hit that max armor button. Most mechs do not have anything close to max armor in their stock configuration, and because you only have four mechs, you�ll need to make sure enemies are spreading damage across all four of your mechs.

With one rare exception, damage to your armor is entirely superficial. It will wear down your armor, but armor damage is harmless, and repairing your armor doesn't cost any cbills or time. Once your armor HP on a section has been depleted, any further shots "go internal", dealing damage to the internal structure HP bar. Internal structure hits also have a chance to crit, damaging a random weapon or other piece equipment stored in that section. One crit will damage a weapon, two will destroy it permanently. Other equipment is generally destroyed with one crit, although a crit to an ammo bin has a chance to ignite the ammo remaining in that bin, instantly destroying the entire section (and injuring the pilot if it wasn't a torso section.) If a section loses all of its internal structure HP, that section is permanently removed, and all of the equipment in that section is destroyed. While damaged weapons can be repaired, any weapons or equipment destroyed by crits or section destruction is gone permanently and will have to be replaced. Repairing internal damage and replacing missing sections also costs a bunch of cbills and time in the repair bays.

Armor is extremely important, but it�s not absolutely everything. You can get away with shaving a little bit on almost every build.

First off, you probably don�t need max back armor. You shouldn�t be letting enemies in to your back arc in the first place. You don�t want to run zero armor on your back, but you can run much less than max safely. A good rule of thumb is to run exactly enough armor to ward off a single hit from a common weapon: medium lasers do 25, large lasers do 40, and 50 is enough to soak a single hit from any but the heaviest weapons.

Your arms may not be important to a build. If you don�t have any equipment in a mech�s arm, you can probably get away with reducing the armor, as low as 25% or even less. Oftentimes arm armor goes to waste, too, because destroying a side torso automatically destroys the arm, regardless of how much HP that arm has left. Going extremely low on arm HP does have a tradeoff, however: repairing internal damage and replacing destroyed sections costs cbills and mechbay time, while repairing armor is always free.

Your legs are much less likely to be hit from the front. You can get away with as little as about 60% of max on a longer-ranged mech. Leg armor becomes more important on mechs with shorter-ranged weapons, however, because a flanking shot is more likely to concentrate damage on a single leg, destroying it.

Don�t shave the head or the front of the torsos. It�s just not worth it. Even if a side torso doesn�t have any equipment in it, replacing a side torso is time-consuming and expensive, and losing a side torso injures the pilot.

Armor doesn�t kill enemies, though.

Intro to mech weapons

The reason you wanted more tonnage was to mount more guns. As a general rule, heavier weapons do more damage per shot, have greater range, and take up more volume (measured in slots) in your mech, but they usually generate more heat.

Besides normal damage, most weapons also deal "stability" damage, to a separate balance HP bar representing the challenge of keeping a walking tank upright under fire. Honestly, stability damage isn't a big consideration in mech building any more. You'll want to keep it in mind when you're actually playing, but focusing on dealing lots of stability damage isn't an efficient or useful strategy since the first weapon rebalance patch.

Before we talk about weapons, we need to talk about heat sinks. Every weapon generates a certain amount of heat per shot, and you'll need to do something about that heat, or else your mechs will overheat, doing damage to their internals, then shut down entirely. While mechs have a base amount of heat they sink every turn, too many hot weapons will mean you�ll need to fit heat sinks. I'll talk more about specific build strategies later, but an efficient weapon in Battletech is relatively light and relatively cool relative to the amount of damage it deals.

You can't fit every kind of weapon to every kind of mech, and you can't fit as many weapons as you want. You can only fit a weapon to a mech section with a matching hardpoint type. There are four types of mech weapon hardpoints in Battletech: ballistic weapons, energy weapons, missile weapons, and support weapons.

Ballistic weapons are relatively cool but generally very heavy. They range from very long-ranged peashooters to extremely heavy short-ranged cannon. Autocannon (ACs), the only ballistic weapons you'll see for most of the game, are relatively inefficient, but the "lostech" ballistic weapons (ultra autocannon, LBX autocannon, and especially gauss rifles) are some of the best weapons in the game.

Energy weapons are light-weight and accurate, but very hot. Medium lasers (MLs) are the gold standard for weapon efficiency: if you don't know what to fit, fit more MLs. Large lasers (LLs) are less efficient jacks-of-all-trades. There's also the particle projection cannon (PPCs), a very inefficient long-ranged lightning/plasma cannon that debuffs enemies with an electrical charge. There are lostech versions of each energy weapon type, either more-accurate pulse lasers or extended range (ER) weapons, but in return for these advantages, the lostech energy weapons are marginally less efficient overall than standard energy weapons, even after the buffs in v1.8/Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal also added Snub PPCs, which are very efficient but very hot energy shotguns, and COILs, momentum-powered blasters that do more damage based on how far you moved.

Missiles come in two varieties: hard-hitting short-ranged missiles (SRMs), and long-ranged missiles (LRMs). SRMs and LRMs are some of the most efficient weapons in their respective roles, but they're limited by their maximum and minimum ranges, respectively. Their main limitation is the fact that rather than single shots, every missile launcher fires a salvo of small missiles, spreading damage out rather than focusing it all on a single section.

Support weapons are a new weapon class in Battletech. They're all extremely efficient, very short-ranged weapons that can be fired on the same turn that you make a melee attack. Small lasers are hotter but have unlimited ammo, machine guns are extremely efficient but spread out their damage in many tiny hits and require ammo bins, and flamers do limited damage and have limited ammo but heat up enemy mechs.

Not all weapons are created alike. Weapons also come in advanced "+" variants. +/++/+++ weapons do extra damage or stability damage, have greater accuracy, generate less heat, weigh less, etc. + weapons are rare drops from salvage, and relatively less common in shops. The best advanced weapons have bonus damage, for what it's worth, while % crit bonuses almost entirely useless. These bonuses don't cost more heat or tonnage; they're just free except for the relatively rarity of advanced weapons.

There are also "lostech" weapons. Without getting too deeply immersed in Battletech lore, the weapons that people make now aren't as high-tech as cannon forged from glorious Damascus steel or whatever. Not all lostech weapons are actually better than their regular counterparts; they have more range or more damage or entirely different fire profiles, but often this comes at the cost of increased tonnage or increased heat. Lostech weapons are all extremely rare drops as salvage, and relatively rare from shops. They also come in + variants, just like regular ones. Either way, both advanced weapons and lostech weapons use the same hardpoints as their regular counterparts.

Ballistic weapons, missile weapons, and machine guns all require ammo bins, which are equipped separately from the weapons. Not only does this mean you have a limited number of shots based on how much tonnage you dedicate to ammo, but these ammo bins also have a chance to explode if you suffer a crit in that section. An ammo explosion destroys that section and injures the pilot (which doesn't stack with the injury from destroying a side torso). Generally you want enough ammo for (only) 8-12 turns of shooting.

Heat

Heat is one of Battletech's unique mechanics, and it's not explained super well in game. Any time you do anything more complicated than walking, bracing, or making a melee attack, your mech generates heat.

Weapons generate heat, with the specific amount listed in that weapon's description. Jumping with jump jets generates a lot of heat: 7.5 per hex, with fractions rounded up. Sprinting also generates five heat.

After you've done all of your actions, your mech sinks some heat harmlessly into the environment. Mechs inherently sink 30 heat, plus 3 for each standard heat sink. Certain environments apply a modifier to this, sinking more heat in cold or moist environments (polar, tundra, tropical) and less heat in barren or hot wastes (deserts, badlands, martian, lunar). Plus, certain terrain features, like water, ice, coolant pools, geothermal vents, or radiation fields can generate or sink extra heat or apply additional modifiers to your heat sinking capacity.

If there's heat left over, your mech heats up. You can absorb up to 60 residual heat safely (more with higher guts skill). More than that, and your mech overheats, taking internal damage to every section. If you get up to 100, your mech shuts down, loses a turn to dump all of its heat, and is vulnerable to called shots. (Don't overheat, and definitely don't shut down.) However, if you generate less heat than you sink in a later turn, it'll eat into your residual heat.

Because you can safely absorb some heat, you don't want an icebox that only shoots as much as it sinks. You don't want to run too hot, however; a weapon that you can't shoot is useless. There are basically two approaches to handling heat, given this tension.

You can build a mech that runs 4-6 bars of heat efficiency, generating about 25 more heat than you sink per turn. (You can get the exact heat values by mousing over the heat efficiency bar.) This gives you lots of staying power before needing to take time off to cool, and is well-suited to mid-ranged or long-ranged mechs that always want to be shooting. This is the safest strategy, especially for newer players.

Alternately, you can build a mech that runs 2-4 bars of heat efficiency, generating 30-35 more heat than it sinks. You'll need to take turns to cool off with a build like this, so you need some sort of plan to use those turns. Some common strategies: a fast mech that uses a hit-and-run strategy, a mech that spends turns making melee attacks rather than shooting hot weapons, a mech that runs weapons that are only situationally useful, or just getting so good at Battletech that you win fights before you overheat.

Efficiency? What do you mean?

tl;dr: You can never go wrong with MLs and missiles. UACs, LBX ACs, and gauss rifles are pretty great too.

The main limitations on how much gun you can put on your mech are tonnage and heat. And, since you can spend tonnage on heat sinks to offset excess heat, it's all tonnage.

This is a solvable mathematical problem. The blue numbers are each weapon's damage-per-ton without taking heat into account, and red is taking heat into account.

(That spreadsheet is based on this spreadsheet, which is more comprehensive but a bit out of date since the 1.8 patch.)

Whether the blue number matters more than the red number is not something you can solve with simple math. Your mech sinks 30 heat per turn, and can safely absorb between 60 and 90 heat (depending on your pilot's Guts skill). Because you can absorb that heat, and because your mech will continue sinking heat on turns where you don't shoot (usually because you're breaking line of sight or making a melee attack), you don't want to offset all of that heat. How much excess heat you want to generate depends on your pilots' skills and your playstyle.

Range is also a consideration. Support weapons are extremely efficient, but their very limited range makes it difficult to use them every turn. Too much range can be wasteful, too, though. Due to the limited sight distance in Battletech, few fights take place at ranges greater than 200-250m. You won't be able to see enemies at longer range, and using spotter-shooter strategies means enemies will be able to concentrate fire on your spotter (when you would rather they shoot a little bit at all four members of your lance).

First, the most efficient weapons.

The gold standard is the medium laser (or even better, a ML++ with +10 damage). It has just enough range to get the job done, it's light enough that you can fit a few on any mech. It's the perfect way to use up your innate heat capacity. Plus, since you can usually fit many MLs, it's easy to precisely control how much heat you want to build up per turn by flipping a laser or two on or off. ER Medium Lasers are almost as efficient, and their greater range is just enough to be useful, but they're so rare that you probably have plenty of more-efficient +damage MLs before you get your first ERML.
SRMs are more efficient than MLs when heat is taken into account. Plus, advanced SRMs with +damage get extra damage on every single missile, doing ridiculous damage overall. A mix of SRM6s and MLs is is a good default loadout on half the mechs in the game. The only reason you don't run SRM-based loadouts on everything is because, while energy hardpoints are common and plentiful, missile hardpoints are relatively limited. All SRMs are equally efficient, but because hardpoints are limited, you'll usually want SRM6s, with the occasional single SRM4. SRM2s are pretty useless.
LRMs are almost as efficient as MLs, and, as the name implies, much longer-ranged. That longer range simplifies positioning, especially very late in the game, when you have access to slow, nearly-indestructible assault mechs. LRM spam isn't an exciting way to play the game, but it is very efficient and very safe. LRM15s are the most efficient and LRM10s the least, but the differences are very minor; just use whatever launchers you have to fill the tonnage, ideally ones with +damage (which applies to each missile). They do have a moderately annoying minimum range; increased tactics skill helps with this, but never eliminates the deadzone.
LBX Autocannon and Ultra Autocannon (with the exception of LBX20s and UAC20s) are all great, if you are lucky enough to get them. Both kinds of lostech autocannon serve basically the same role. LBX ACs shoot shotgun-like clouds of grapeshot pellets, while UACs shoot two shots at the cost of greatly increased recoil compared to a regular AC. Except for the 20s (and the UAC2, which is only good with +damage), all of them are comparable to LRMs in range, role, and efficiency. If you have the choice, the LBXes are more efficient and don't suffer from the recoil buildup that slowly impairs the Ultras, but lostech ACs are so rare that you take what you can get.
Small lasers and machine guns are significantly more efficient than any other weapons in the game, but they do have extremely limited range. That limited range makes them very situational. If you're fitting three or more support weapons, use machine guns with a single ton of ammo; otherwise, use SLs.
Likewise, ER Small Lasers let you use their support-weapon-grade efficiency at a more practical range. They're still pretty short-ranged and they're pretty rare, but it's worth it for a weapon that is even more efficient than a ML.

Efficiency is a misleading way to evaluate "hole-puncher" weapons that concentrate all of their damage into a single hit. I think most people overrate these weapons, but I do have to admit that they're useful in situations where you can hit enemies in the back or abuse called shots. The threshold is 61 damage: that's exactly enough damage to guarantee a headshot kill.

The archetypical - and only common - holepuncher is the AC20. It's a short-ranged cannon that does less damage, pound for pound, than an array of SRMs and/or MLs, but it concentrates all 100 damage in one point. It's not a great weapon, but it's the standard of comparison for other weapons with a similar damage profile.
Ultra AC20s are odd ducks. They're more efficient than SRMs, while doing dealing two 100 damage hits. However, they have incredibly high recoil, so you'll need to skip every other turn shooting them. That's a significant problem when you've dedicated at least 16 tons to this one weapon.
Gauss rifles are also very rare, but they're long-ranged and about as efficient as LRMs. Plus, they concentrate all of their damage into a single shot that deals enough damage to destroy a mech's head in one shot. On top of all of this, a small portion of that damage automatically bypasses armor, and has a chance to damage weapons or equipment even before all of the armor has been stripped off. You can't count on the occasional comedy ammo explosion (and gauss ammo won't explode!), but it is funny when it happens.
COILs are an entirely new weapon introduced in Heavy Metal. They're blasters with capacitors that are powered up by running, so they do more damage (and generate more heat) based on how many evasion pips you built up on that mech before firing. (However, evasion pips generated with jump jets don't count; you have to run on the ground.) They're very fiddly to use, and generate a lot of heat, so they're really only useful with a bombing-run playstyle with very fast, relatively light mechs. If you have the choice, the heavier ones are better, but since they're rare, you work with what you can get.
AC10s or ERPPCs can do enough damage to pop heads if you have a +damage advanced variant, without the range limitations of the AC20. They're dreadfully inefficient though.

There are a bunch of weapons that are perfectly usable, but overshadowed in their main niche.

Large Lasers aren't good or bad at anything. LLs are less efficient than LRMs, and, while their greater range makes them passable filler in a build that uses LRMs or lostech ACs, they're still less efficient than MLs. I'll be honest, I use LLs more than I really should; they're probably the best of the mediocre weapons.
Besides the AC20, standard (non-ultra, non-LBX) autocannon are mediocre overall. They're less efficient than LRMs without offering any real advantages. In particular, AC2s have a bunch of wasteful excess max range, and AC10s are bad at pretty much everything. AC5s are the least bad: they're still worse than LRMs, but only about as good as LLs.
Snub PPCs are energy shotguns that fill a very similar role to medium lasers. However, they're much rarer than MLs and, because they're heavier, they don't allow the same degree of control over your heat generation. They're fine (especially if you get a +damage advanced version), but you could just be using MLs instead.
Pulse Lasers (whether SPLs, MPLs, or LPLs) compete directly with their regular laser counterparts. They're a little more accurate, but they're less efficient, which is a bad tradeoff. Not only are they so rare that you probably have ++ variants of the standard lasers by their point, but you probably have such good gunnery on your pilots that you're not worried about an extra 5% to hit.
LBX AC20s are just okay. They're still worse than MLs or SRMs while being less accurate, and they don't deal all of their damage in one spot the way a regular AC20 does. They're not bad, but there's no reason to use them over the more-common alternatives.

Some weapons just aren't worth using ever.

Flamers are gimmick weapons. You can make a build to paralyze enemy mechs, but you're probably better off just using weapons that deal damage. They used to be OP in PVP apparently but were nerfed.
TAG and Narc Beacons work like weapons, but their main effect is debuffing the enemy to take more damage from lasers and ballistic or missiles for the rest of the turn. These are fairly marginal gimmick weapons, because they don't buff the damage of the mech shooting them. TAG's a bit more useful than a Narc, but neither of them is particularly good.
PPCs (and their lostech counterparts, ERPPCs) suck rear end. People are going to get mad at me for this, but those people are wrong. They're just so heavy and so hot and so underwhelming, and the "sensors impaired" debuff is useful but not that useful. Plus, they have more recoil than any non-ultra AC. What is up with that?

I've never fooled with mortars (beyond the Bull Shark's built in mortar) or Inferno missiles. They're both super rare.

Other mech equipment

tl;dr: Jump jets are great but hot. Any weightless equipment is always good, especially hit defense gyros and cockpit mods. Everything else is just situational.

Standard heat sinks aren't the only tool to deal with heat. You can very occasionally find double heat sinks, which sink twice as much heat, only weigh one ton, but take up three crit slots. They're nice to have but you'll never have as many as you'd like.

Heat exchangers reduce the heat generated by your weapons only by a percentage: 10, 15, or 20%, at a cost of 2, 3, or 4 tons. In theory, exchangers are better than heat sinks as long as you're generating more than 60 heat from weapons per turn. Even though they're more efficient on paper, I don't use exchangers much, because they don't do anything on turns where you aren't shooting. They also don't affect jump jet heat, and they aren't affected (for better or worse) by environmental or terrain effects. I probably should use exchangers more, though.

Heat banks increase your capacity to absorb heat, without increasing your ability to sink it every turn. I've never found any use for them.

Jump jets let you jump over terrain when moving, which is especially handy on maps with a large amount of vertical or difficult terrain. You also generate a lot more evasion pips when jumping compared to moving on the ground. However, jump jets take up tonnage and generate a lot of heat. If you're fitting JJs, I prefer fitting as many as you possibly can, up to about 5-6. Jump jets come in three weight classes: Jump Jet (S) at 0.5t each for light or medium mechs, Jump Jet (H) at 1t per for heavy mechs and 80-85t assault mechs, and Jump Jet (A) at 2t per for 90t or heavier assault mechs. Jump Jet (A)s are IMO never worth it.

Gyros are rare-ish drops but basically free buffs. They all take zero tonnage, but three of your four CT crit slots. The best ones are hit defense, which decreases the mech's chance to be hit. These are best on light mechs (because of how evasion stacks), but good on any mech. Stability damage reduction and melee hit (increased chance to hit in melee) are both fine. The only downside is that gyros make it difficult to use CT weapon hardpoints.

There are several different pieces of equipment that can only fit in the single head slot. The best of these is the Cockpit Mod, which increases your pilots' HP, and has to be depleted before any injuries affect them. There's also the pretty decent Comm System, which increases your resolve generation each turn, and the just okay Rangefinder, which increases your mech's vision range. None of them cost any tonnage, so as long as your mech doesn't have anything more important in the head slot and you have the equipment, you might as well use one.

Arm Mods are an odd duck. They increase the amount of damage or stability damage that your mech deals with a melee attack. The best Arm Mods are the regular ones, with no +. Those mods take two crit slots, cost zero tonnage, and add 5 or 10 melee damage. Arm Mod+ or ++ add more damage, but cost more crit slots or more tonnage. They're okay if you use melee often, but you'd really rather have more of the weightless version. Arm Mod+++ is still worse than the plain version, but significantly better than the others: it weighs one ton, takes 5 crits, and adds 60 melee damage. Obviously, they can only go in the arms.

Leg Mods increase death from above damage, or decrease death from above self-damage. DFA is an extremely marginal gimmick and leg real estate is limited, so you can just throw these in the trash.

TTS increase your accuracy with one type of weapon (ballistic/energy/missile), and by the time you actually get any of them, your pilots probably have pretty high gunnery. I've never really used them, because that tonnage could be heat sinks or more guns.

ECM is a heavy, rare defensive equipment piece that I talk about more in the specific build section below. It's really good, but it's vanishingly rare and very gimmicky; you probably won't ever see it except on the Raven, where it comes built-in.

Active Probes are heavy equipment that lets you send out a sensor ping, sensor locking all nearby enemies. It's too heavy and situational to be worth tracking down this extremely rare piece of gear.

So where do I put this poo poo?

tl;dr: Ammo goes in the head or legs, everything else goes in the torsos if you can, but sometimes you don't have a choice.

Mech weapons are relatively imprecise. It's easy to affect your chance to hit or be hit at all: higher gunnery skill and accurate weapons like lasers make attacks more likely to hit, while smaller and faster-moving targets are less likely to be hit. However, it's much more difficult to control where your shots will hit the target. What section you hit isn't based on accuracy. There's a fixed chart based on what arc you're attacking from.

Shooting a mech from the front or back is most likely to hit the center torso, followed by the side torsos, followed by the legs and arms. Shooting from the side arc, you're most likely to hit the corresponding side torso, followed by the arm on that side, followed by the leg, followed by a relatively small chance to hit the center torso. (There's never any chance to hit the opposite side, from a side arc.) No matter where you shoot from, there's a 1% chance to hit the head. If a shot hits a section that isn't there any more, it instead hits the next-closest section to the center: missing arm/leg hits turn into side torso hits, and missing side torso hits turn into center torso hits.

Because hits are randomly distributed regardless of your accuracy, outside of using Precise Strike or shooting a knocked-down mech, you can only focus your damage on a particular part by shooting at an enemy from the side arc. This has two major implications for mech design.

First, you can somewhat predict and control how enemies are likely to target you by how you position your mechs. A "brawler" that gets into the thick of combat with short-ranged weapons is likely to be attacked from all sides, so back armor is more useful. Likewise, arm-mounted weapons are more likely to be lost from damage, so a "zombie" build that mounts more important equipment closer to the center torso might be advantageous. A longer-ranged mech can use a "deadside" build, by putting all of the weapons on the left or right side, then favoring exposing the opposite, dead side to the enemy.

Second, equipping many small weapons or weapons that deal damage in many small packets means that damage will be widely distributed over many different sections of the enemy, while large weapons that deal all of their damage in a single packet are more likely to result in internal damage. In particular, since all mechs have a max of 61 HP in the (rarely-hit) head section, any weapon that does at least 61 damage per shot always has a small chance of destroying an enemy in a single hit.

So, how does this affect where you put equipment?

The most location-sensitive equipment is ammunition. If an ammo bin gets hit by a crit, it has a chance to explode, destroying the entire section and (if you didn't lose a side torso in the same turn) injuring the pilot. Ideally, you want to put ammo in the head, because there's a very low chance for the head to be hit, and it's even rarer for all of the armor to be stripped off of the head. It does mean that a hit that strips all the armor but doesn't destroy the internal structure could turn into instant death, but that's a very low chance.

The head is only one slot, and even that one slot might be taken up by a head-mounted weapon or head-exclusive equipment. Personally, I prefer to put excess ammo in the legs. Leg hits are relatively uncommon from the front or back, and if you're flanked, you're likely to lose the arm and side torso before the leg. Plus, side torsos can be penetrated through the back armor, while legs have the same armor all around. The side torso is third-best.

Never put ammo in the relatively fragile arms. Also don't ever put it in the center torso: your center torso has the most internal structure and thinner rear armor relative to the legs, plus getting an ammo explosion in the CT is instant death.

In general, you want weapons in the torsos instead of the arms if you can, just because of the greater armor. This is more important in a short-ranged brawler, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Arm-mounted weapons are slightly more accurate, but are more likely to be destroyed. You can arrange weapons to favor one side or the other for a deadside build, as well.

Heat sinks, jump jets, and gauss ammo (which doesn't explode) can go wherever, as long as it isn't the arms. Generally this means in the torsos, wherever you have space. This can favor one side or the other for a deadside build, but it doesn't matter that much.

Overall build strategies

You can't go wrong with max-ish armor and as many LRMs or SRMs (never both) as you can cram your mech, then use MLs or heat sinks to get your heat efficiency to about 5 bars. You can play the entire game like this.

Long-ranged mechs should use LRMs, of course, but ultra/LBX autocannon are also great. LLs and AC5s are fine as filler. Resist the urge to strip the armor for more guns, because you'll still want your long-ranged mechs to get involved enough in the fight to soak damage, or else enemies will focus fire and blow your mechs to scrap. Ideally, if you're using long-range builds, you want your entire lance to be long-ranged, so you don't have one exposed mech absorbing the brunt of the enemy fire. (Indirect fire is a trap. It's occasionally useful but don't build mechs with the intent of making indirect fire LRM attacks every turn.)

Long-range builds make it easier to deadside: put your weapons only on the left or right side of the mech, and face your mechs sideways, so the opposite side is pointing towards as many enemies as possible. This means that even if you lose the arm or even the torso, your mech is still as effective as possible.

Short-ranged mechs all have superficially-similar builds: lots of MLs and SRMs, possibly with MGs or SLs. Because you're likely to be flanked, arm armor and back armor are more important for short-ranged mechs, and you want to avoid putting weapons in the arms if you can. (You may not have a choice.) Ultra ACs and LBX ACs and snub PPCs are also fine, as long as you're careful to avoid weapons with minimum ranges that get in the way.

In general, long-range mechs should run cooler and short-ranged mechs should run hotter. Short-ranged mechs are often fast, and can duck out of the fight or focus on sprinting to avoid being targeted. If they're not fast, they probably have an inherently high melee damage attack, and meleeing enemies doesn't generate heat (unless you use SLs). Dedicated punchbots are joke mechs, but any mech that uses short-ranged weapons and doesn't rely on evasion to stay alive can spend a turn punching enemies to cool off.

Gimmicks that are actually kind of useful

Initiative, Backshooting, and COILs

If you have higher initiative, you can reserve your move until after your opponent goes, then move behind them and shoot, then next turn shoot again before they move. (Ace Pilot means you can move again afterward, too.) This is the main way to make light mechs useful at all.

It helps to have some Resolve built up, so you can use Precise Shot on one or both shots to focus the damage on the back center torso. It's useless to splatter damage randomly on the back of a mech, but it's one of the few ways to quickly kill even very tough mechs.

You can do this with any weight class if you have extra initiative, either from using a Cyclops Z (an assault mech that gives all mechs in your lance +1 initiative) or from Master Tactician, the second-tier Tactics skill. (Master Tactician means no Ace Pilot, though.)

COILs are great for backshooting, because they focus all of their damage on a single point, and they benefit from the extra evasion pip from Sure Footing. A COIL-L and four evasion pips does 140 damage! However, they're relatively difficult to use with double-turn initiative shenanigans because you need to move before shooting them to do significant damage, so you might still want to stick with the usual MLs, SRMs, and support weapons.

Ravens and ECM

Ravens - and any mech with the heavy, rare ECM equipment - have a special bubble that makes you conditionally invisible to the enemy. At the start of the turn (or when first entering the bubble), all of your mechs in the bubble get a stealth charge. (Ravens get two for themselves only.) When a mech shoots or is sensor-locked, it loses a stealth charge, and when an enemy enters the field, all the mechs lose a stealth charge. Whether or not you have a stealth charge, as long as you're in a friendly ECM bubble and not sensor locked, LRM attacks against you are much less accurate and indirect LRM attacks are impossible.

ECM is great for getting into position or escaping a fight. It's not terribly useful while you're shooting, since that removes your stealth charges, but it's great for getting a damaged mech out of the way, or for quickly moving into a better terrain position or finishing an objective. Don't expect it to protect you from LRMs - enemies will sensor lock one mech then focus all of their LRMs on that mech - and it doesn't help against enemies who charge into close combat. ECM is best when used with a relatively long-ranged lance; if you're using a Raven with a heavier lance, don't expect it to do much damage on its own.

Headshot bullshit

There's one extremely cheesy gimmick that only works relatively late in the game, and completely trivializes it. Do not do this if you want to keep having fun.

Every mech, regardless how heavy, has only 61 HP in the head. Once you get raise the morale on your ship high enough, you get enough Resolve each turn to make at least one Precision Strike per turn. With 9 Tactics and Called Shot Mastery, a called shot to the head has an 18% chance to hit the head.

It's not actually 18%. It's only 18% on the first weapon you shoot, and diminishes toward the default 1% with each hit you make on that attack. All called shots work like this; don't bother using Precise Strike with missiles or LBX ACs to try and get headshot kills.

This means you can take as many weapons that do at least 61 damage as you can and go around one-rounding enemies, getting full salvage. This gets even more ridiculous if you use a Marauder, which increases the called-shot bonus, meaning you have a 33-35% chance to hit the head with a called shot and called shot mastery. A Marauder with a 9 tactics pilot and a gauss rifle, AC20, and/or +damage AC10/LPL/ERPPC will regularly get multiple headshot kills per mission.

Marauders also reduce all damage taken by your entire lance by 10% - and it's usually more than 10%, because fractions are rounded down. Marauders are OP.

Dedicated weapon boats

There's no real thought involved in packing a mech with a bunch of the same weapon. You'll just do that naturally. Some mechs have special equipment that encourages you to "boat" all the same weapon type on it, though.

However, Annihilators and Warhammers get extra damage on ballistic and energy weapons, respectively. You can just run the same builds you're using for everything else, but AC5s go from marginal to viable on Annihilators, and LLs go from just okay to pretty great on Warhammers. They still don't make garbage like AC2s or PPCs worth using: a +10 damage PPC on a Warhammer is still less efficient than a vanilla AC5, let alone LRMs.

Vulcans get double range on all support weapons, and have lots of support hardpoints. Put machine guns on them, it's fun and pretty good early in the game! SLs are a little better for shooting things in the butt.

I think that's enough words about robots for now. Put this in an OP or whatever.

Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Dec 4, 2019

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:44

RBA Starblade: Apr 28, 2008; Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

quote:

So where do I put this poo poo?

tl;dr: Ammo goes in the head

dekker nooo

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:47

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Cease to Hope posted:

weapons fire in descending order of damage, so you can't ever benefit from your own tag/narc. and multiples don't stack. two tags seems kinda useless

I think they do stack -- the effect has "stackLimit" : 0, so even if you only see one icon in the status bar they should all be applying. Unless there's some special code in the game to make them work differently.

But speaking of weapon firing order, are people sure that it's just by damage, or do criticals get considered as well? At one point I had a mech with some +50% crit mlas and I could swear they got moved down the weapons list. Not positive though and I haven't experimented with it (because +crit weapons are the weakest bonus).

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:52

anakha: Sep 16, 2009

Thanks for the writeup.

I will add though that Snubbies occupy a niche that may be bigger than people expect. There are quite a few heavies/assaults that have a lot of available tonnage but not a lot of hardpoints, and you generally want to maximize the amount of damage you can put out per hardpoint. Snubbies can be good options there.

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:55

Organ Fiend: May 21, 2007; custom title

Battletech - Heavy Metal: Dead I Am The Dekker

# ? Dec 4, 2019 17:59

Cease to Hope: Dec 12, 2011

anakha posted:

Thanks for the writeup.

I will add though that Snubbies occupy a niche that may be bigger than people expect. There are quite a few heavies/assaults that have a lot of available tonnage but not a lot of hardpoints, and you generally want to maximize the amount of damage you can put out per hardpoint. Snubbies can be good options there.

lbx acs, srms, and mls are all a little better and generally more versatile, and that's enough to kit out any mech in the game. snubbies are fine! there's just no particular reason to seek them out over the alternatives; they don't have a unique niche.

i'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but i'd need to see something more specific than this.

# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:07

Back Hack: Jan 17, 2010; Can't post for 6 hours!

Battletech - Heavy Metal: Radar Rider

# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:09

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Cease to Hope posted:

It's not actually 18%. It's only 18% on the first weapon you shoot, and diminishes toward the default 1% with each hit you make on that attack. All called shots work like this; don't bother using Precise Strike with missiles or LBX ACs to try and get headshot kills.

My understanding is slightly different (but I might be full of poo poo here):

If you have 1 mech with 2 weapons that are single projectile headchoppers (AC/20, Gauss, AC10++ damage, PPC++ damage on a Warhammer, etc.), it seems like each weapon has an independent 18% chance to headshot.

if you have multi-projectile weapons like SRMs and LBXes, their per projectile chance to hit the head is clearly nerfed.

I know LRMs are further nerfed so there is only 1 projectile that can hit the head per salvo, no matter how big the salvo is, so even an LRM20 can only hit hit the head with 1 missile per 20 projectile attack.

# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:13

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

One wrinkle to lrms is that they seem to roll per projectile until they get that hit. I know that shooting heads with lrm20s I always almost get a hit.

Not good for popping heads obviously but useful for beating up pilots if they�ve already taken a few other hits.

# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:15

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

RBA Starblade posted:

dekker nooo

The missile hat is the height of fashion.

# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:20

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Cease to Hope posted:

lbx acs, srms, and mls are all a little better and generally more versatile, and that's enough to kit out any mech in the game. snubbies are fine! there's just no particular reason to seek them out over the alternatives; they don't have a unique niche.

i'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but i'd need to see something more specific than this.

The SPPC+ with a damage boost moves them from 15x5 to 25x5 for 35 heat, no ammo, decent stability damage, the debuff, and at long range. That's pretty drat good if you've got a relatively cool-running mech looking for some burst damage, and heat is less of an issue now that coolant flush exists.

How are people kitting out their Marauders? I've got a gauss rifle and two ++ LRs right now and its either on fire when it pops heads or pretty anemic when it doesn't, though its squad-wide durability option is nice.

e: Yeah I think TAGs stack; or at least, TAGs of differing bonus damage do. And for 1 ton, its probably worthwhile later in the game when one ML won't do much but boosting your incoming UAC20 rounds will. (especially if you have breaching shot pilots) I think I'm going to run two brawlers and two pilots with multishot just to get a spare TAG thrown around.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Dec 4, 2019

# ? Dec 4, 2019 18:31

Cease to Hope: Dec 12, 2011

Klyith posted:

I think they do stack -- the effect has "stackLimit" : 0, so even if you only see one icon in the status bar they should all be applying. Unless there's some special code in the game to make them work differently.

i tested it, and it turns out they do stack, even if they have the same damage bonus. huh.