Mechs

[BlueFlames]

(How do we not have this thread yet?)

What are you looking forward to piloting?

I'm looking primarily at the Jenner and Raven, myself, as I have an affinity for light mechs, jump jets, and electronics packages. If needed in a bruiser role, my habit of fitting large autocannons to small mechs draws me immediately to the Hunchback.

My gears are already turning with the Hunchback, in fact, as every time I look at its stock configuration, since finding out that Gauss Rifles were planned for the initial release, I want to swap the AC/20 for a Gauss Rifle, so that I can use the mech like an especially fat Hollander. I don't want to come up with too many intricate ideas, until the game is out, and we can actually toy with the mech lab, but it does look like there's a lot of room for tinkering with the Hunchback's loadout.

[Chimera]

While the scouting aspect intrigues me, I'm really interested in the fire-support aspect of it; apparently hills and terrain pose less of an impediment to missile delivery systems than in previous editions. So leaning toward a Catapult (or an Archer if that manages to make it in).

[Stracius]

I tend to favor scouting/ewar/interferrence roles so a light, fast mech would likely catch my fancy. Second to that I also favor long range support roles such as the LRM missile variants of the catapult. I'm not a big fan of the slow and heavy chassis.

[Chimera]

Of course my favorite battlemech is the Awesome so we'll see...

[Rock-n-Roll]

I'm not sure. I know I will generally stay away from assault mechs.

In the previous games, I tended to do will with mechs in the 60-70 ton range and generally fare better with energy weapons than ballistics. Alsways been a good pilot but a bad gunner, so anything that needs ammo is usually bad for me because I waste a lot of it missing my shots. I have always liked the PPC best as my primary weapon.

If streak SRMs make it into the game at some point, I love those. Anything that helps me hit a target is good

I did very well in the league we played in as far as win/loss went, but that's because I played marathon games in which I lulled my opponents to sleep, then killed them. I was not well liked for it.

[BlueFlames]

I've been prototyping Hunchander designs in the mech lab addon for MegaMek. The one I'm most pleased with so far swaps the AC-20 and Small Laser for a Gauss Rifle with sixteen rounds of ammuntion and adds an additional pair of Medium Lasers to aid in close quarters. The extra lasers (and maximized armor) come by way of swapping the standard internals for endo steel and the standard armor for ferro-fiberous.

Now, it's my understanding that each chassis in MWO is limited to the same number of each type of weapon that it originally comes with (i.e. a customized Hunchback 4G can only have three energy weapons and a ballistic weapon). If that's the case, then it will be pretty easy to exchange the four Medium Lasers in my current configuration for two Medium Pulse Lasers. Depending on how MWO handles the differences between normal lasers and pulse lasers, that might let me reduce the number of heat sinks to make way for an active probe or ECM package.

Like I said, the gears are turning.

I might poke around with some Jenner or Raven designs in the next few days too. I don't like either of their stock configurations for recon work, as one lacks any form of electronics suite, and the other lacks jump jets. On a quick glance at their stock configurations, the Jenner looks more promising to work with, since the starting point would be finding room for the desired electronics package(s), rather than figuring out how to get rid of the XL engine.

[Wolfman]

I'm not over exaggerating when I say I can remember any game that Rock was in lasted for an hour on average. Sometimes for 1.5 hours. I've never seen anyone with that kind of patience. And he did always win.

[BlueFlames]

I may have made a whoopsy, when further modifying my Hunchander.... I made a variant with stealth armor, which isn't available until 3063, at the absolute earliest. If we're still playing in 14 years, though, then have I got a sniper mech for you!

On the bright side, I've got a similar version with ferro fibrous armor that retains the ECM package (which can be easily swapped for a Beagle Active Probe, should enhanced detection capability be a higher priority than stealthiness) that was required for the stealth armor.

You know, in MW3 and MW4, I probably spent more time in the mech lab than in the game-proper, but I had to wait for the game's release. Thanks to MegaMek and Pirahna's very rigid adherence to tabletop BattleTech rules, though, the mech lab is getting a headstart over gameplay on this outting.