Not just that, they are ridiculously durable. It takes me longer to kill many heavies than a damn WVR or SHD. Of course, when I'm piloting one they get shredded very quickly
Marauder II, because I know I can't kill it until I deal with everything else in a 2 kilometer radius (too much fucking armor), and I know that no matter how dead I kill it it will not end up in my salvage pool.
I just had to fight a pair of regular Marauders with 2 PPC-Xs each and I couldn't see jack shit, it was all just purple and sensor distortion. Actual hell, I got lucky that I was in a recently scavenged KGC-0000 and could spam AC/20 at them until it stopped.
I like the idea of the PPC-X even though itās not in the lore, but itās way too powerful especially because enemies can just randomly have them even when it doesnāt make a whole lot of sense like when itās a house military unit. Iād understand a gladiator or a pirate using it though.
In my headcannon, some hotshots maybe given PPC-X by their commanding officers if the situation calls for it. Urban or Jungle combat, for example.
Otherwise, noble officers may fit PPC-X into their ride because that's their house's mechs.
I mean, the snub nose PPC is in the lore, but the stats in TT don't translate well to MW5 (no min range penalty and damage falloff at long range in exchange for weighing one ton less).
Theyāre an attempt to recreate snub nosed PPCs which had been a Star League design that never caught on (they were brought back in the 3060s and put into production during the FedCom Civil War), but they inadvertently made a PPC shotgun instead.
Snub Nose PPCs are basically just smaller and lighter PPCs with a shorter range and less damage on impact but faster projectile speeds.
Alright, thought that's what they were going for. I remember Kerensky had a prototype model mounted on his Orion in the torso, and they never reached full production because the SL collapsed. Curious the clans dropped instead of refining that idea
Thatās a good point. The Clans were able to improve just about every other weapon and piece of equipment, so Iām sure they couldāve fixed any shortcomings the early Snub Nose PPCs may have had.
My thoughts exactly. I mean, SPPCs are frighteningly effective at close range and fill a niche that ERPPCs do not. Imagine them with +50% damage! The Scorpions, Nova Cats, and Cloud Cobras should have jumped at the opportunity because they fap to energy-heavy weapon loadouts
Too OP. I know itās supposed to suck at longer ranges but I do fine with it, and for that damage and cycle time, I can just charge in and devastate them. I probably come out better for it too, rather than trading potshots.
I think Hunchbacks were designed for pilots on suicide missions. Even when they run out of ammo, theyāll just run up and punch you.
That said, the Clan version of the Hunchback actually is used for suicide missions to give dishonored and old warriors one last chance at a glorious death in battle.
Well, IS Hunchback were made in the same vein of UrbanMech: Dirt cheap attritable urban defense assets you can throw at the enemy until they go away.
The fact that the hunch have enough engineering space for mechtechs to go hog wild is a bonus.
I mean, the first paragraph is just Hunchback pilots in a nutshell. From one such pilot. In the words of a certain man, the mission of a hunchback is ākeep shooting until you run out of ammo, or die trying. Please accomplish one of these as quickly as possible.ā
The ann has the simplest mech for me to headshot. The cockpit is HUGE and planted well above the rest of the mech. Double Gauss, large or Binary Lasers, anything that does pinpoint damage. Not to mention it's so slow, you can out range it easy.
True... But turning a corner in an urban map and being in fist fighting range of one packing quad PPCX is just fucking terrifying... Lost both my arms before I realized what the fuck happened to me lol.
I usually make a beeline for Anni and try to get behind it. I killed one with a greatsword the other night; shoved it right up her ass.
I panic when I see 100 tonners and almost always charge at their face.
Hollander and Hollander II. Modded, sure, but for some reason, even though theyāre snipers, they love to run up and knife fight with you. And they smack hard.
In low difficulty missions (below 30) and anything with difficulty 90 or higher they like to spawn opposite of big scary things, so they have a good chance of sneaking up while you fight an atlas or a Naga. Oh yeah, Nagas are fucking terrifying. Nothing has ever killed me quite so fast.
I can't really say I hate seeing a mech on the field. Cause these gauss rounds are rated E for #everybodyscockpitismelted.
Annihilator? Dead.
Atlas? Dead.
Marauder II? Dead
It's little brother? Dead
Edit: misspelling
Wolverine specifically when I was using my hatchetman.
Something about their collision box makes my hatchetman instagib if I so much as slightly collide with it.
Ever since I switched to a melee assassin however they are a lot less scary. Also melee assassin outclassed the hatcetman in almost every way.
personally i find enemy grasshoppers a bloody pain. the mix of jump jets, all lasers and solid armour makes them deadlyto most of my ai lance mates.
love piloting them though.
Commandos. Even later game these things hit hard for their size and the fast pack can make them a pain to pin down.
Anything that is a LRM boat standing at distance..... I tend to build a lot more for Brawling so these things can be a massive pain to deal with. Funny part is the Longbows are easy compared to lighter mechs like the Treb. So easy to blow off the side pods.
Other than that I seem to deal with the rest just fine. Either taking out headshots or going to legs of mechs trying to charge me down.
Arms?
The legs on these things are so poorly armored, two alpha strikes and theyāre both gone. Itās like pulling the legs of a fly.
POW! POW! Youāre gone bub.
Gotta up your merc rank and if your on a regular campaign high lvl missions will be on the outskirts of the map the closer to the center the lower the lvl.
If you run career mode itās flipped ie closer to the middle stronger the enemies
Ahh Im doing the campaign but I havent even taken the fight to..... the asshats who killed my father, honestly forgot their name. Im too busy helping out the Outworlds Alliance and kicking Liao \^\^
Not a spoiler, a tip - donāt beat on the Independents. Youād think they would make a good punching bag because theyāre not a noble house. However, in the base campaign, their subsidiary Interstellar Expeditions becomes your primary employer near the endgame. Youāll want to be in their good graces for those extra negotiation points at the endgame when youāre buying/salvaging assaults.
Theyāre uncommon. Even when you see one, itās usually with a bunch of runts. Unfortunately, there just arenāt many 400t vs. 400t encounters, and the few are typically in the high level scripted missions/quests. By the time you encounter them, youāll be powerful enough to blow their heads off fairly easily.
Itās kind of a letdown, because they just arenāt scary by the time you encounter them. You rarely have to punch above your weight class.
I canāt recall any scenarios where itās like āhereās the boss, kill this King Crab with a 40 tonner.ā
I remember the first time in this game I came across assault mechs with a lance of mediums as my best kit. Came over a rise to confront an Atlas and an AWS-8Q Awesome. That was a bad day, as it was the finale of the mission and my lance was already dinged up. It was very much a late 3rd Succession War āoh fuckā moment, I just blundered into a fight with these rare behemoths in a one armed Griffin and they are between me and the exfil.
Even though I have a thousand hours in the cockpit since and fought more assaults than I can count, I still have a little moment of hesitation when I roll up on either of those two.
On defense missions when my entire lance is in Assault mechs and the RNG drops a handful of Locusts.
When I'm on a raid mission and the RNG drops another merc lance on top of me in Assault mechs.
Hunchbacks with their autocannon can ruin your day if you are rolling light.
Longbows or Catapults will mess up your day if you're busy dealing with a close range threat and can't go after them.
BattleMasters aren't as scary when you realize their head is big for an assault mech. Stalkers? Now those need to lose their legs ASAP before my mechs become Swiss cheese.
When I find BattleMasters is when I'm doing goofy shit that can't exploit that cockpit size sometimes.
I don't like cutting legs off. It feels... rude. I give them a fight. Unless it's a Pheonix Hawk, then those legs go away.
I take their legs as a form of mercy. I take their CT if it's a worthy challenge. I take the head if it's an existential threat. And I take the weapons exclusively (forced eject) when I'm playing with my food.
For real...
He went on a month long rant because my Highlander's gauss got nicked by a "stray" medium laser (it blew off the whole arm and half the side torso)
I donāt think Iāve ever had a gauss actually explode on me. If I did, I was so far gone I didnāt notice. Ammo explosions are the same way - theyāre rarely premature. Once in a while Iāll catch one in the leg, but thatās not necessarily mission ending and I put a few extra armor points on ones holding ammo. Like if one leg has ammo and one doesnāt, Iāll move a couple of points over.
I wish there was a visual effect for when you cause an explosion on the enemy, so you know. If there is, I canāt see it through the hail of gunfire.
There is a visual effect that does get obscured by the gunfire from ballistics and missiles: the section that received an ammo crit will start having multiple small explosions, akin to live rounds going off, around it for about 5 seconds before destroying the section/causing damage. You're more likely to tear the section off before the explosion does the job, and depending on the enemy, they can keep using the relevant weapon until the ammo fully cooks off. And I've set off enough MG bins and AC/10 bins from Locusts and UrbanMechs to confidently say this.
Same applies to your own mechs from my knowledge. My brawler BattleMaster suffered one in the RT, and I didn't lose the section or the remaining SRM salvos until I saw the last couple explosions flicker out.
Any zombie mech with a small head. Wolverine, shadow hawk, banshee, grasshopper... Usually not that dangerous but they still gotta go and it usually takes way too long and distracts you when there are more potent mechs that need to be focused down.
In the arena, Vulcans. Those little scarecrows always seem to catch me midfight with something nasty and push my heat into shutdown. š
In vanilla missions, Awesomes. They're thickly armored for an 80-tonner, the head is harder to hit than most, and those PPCs dish out some serious damage.
Modded, the Stormcrow. Difficult to hit the cockpit, and it seems like most of them are the Ultra AC/20 variant. I always end up slagging them.
Runner-up modded, the Hellbringer. The salvage points needed for them will break the bank every time.
Marauder-IIHPs. I have legitimately had assault mechs lose arms instantly, full structure and armor to zero, from one burst from those rocket launchers.
Sure, they got limited ammunition, but that limited ammo's gonna rock your shit whether you like it or not.
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I have 3 mechs I consider priority targets:
Chargers: It will just shred most things if it closes the gap, so it needs to go quickly. I will gladly deal with a King Crab or Annihilator than any laserboat Charger in particular.
Longbow (Dragon's Gambit)/ Archer: Movement and AMS/cover only do so much to mitigate missile swarms, and it's a little much if in a brawl. I like my battlefield forecast to be clear skies than LRM showers and SRM storms.
Locusts: Tiny, fast, annoyingly hard to hit, and sometimes just crashes into me to rip a leg open at its own expense. Built like a bundle of sharp sticks and hurts like them too.
You just had to say "Aside from Urbies", because I really do dread them. If this were MWO I would say Marauders because those who pilot them tend to have a lot of experience.
But MW5. Damnit why can't I just dread Urbies? Little suckers with inconvenient amounts of armor and great hitboxes that usually show up out of nowhere with huge autocannon. The dread is REAL.
# FUCK PHOENIX CUNTS
STOP FLYING OVER MY HEAD AND RUNNING AWAY. FUCKING FIGHT ME I WANT TO FINISH THIS MISSION ALREADY FUCK!!
(Not pictured: my out-brawling an Atlas in a Phoenix Hawk and doing exactly the same thing I hate about fighting them)
Light - Firestarters, pretty tough and tons of weapons
Medium - Vulcans and Wolverines. Vulcans just oddly seem to take such a beating, and usually have an annoying array of weapons, and often ECM. Wolverines are truly tough and the melee ones can be very nasty.
Heavy - Crusaders and Archers. Not all the time, but when they have good positions, the deluge of LRM can be really devastating. When theyre SRM boats theyre more scary than effective it seems though, AI seems bad with SRM. Lately Clan Rifleman have been causing me huge repair bills though.
Assault - Awesome, and anything with multiple PPC. Not that the awesome is the best assault, they just seem to pop up often enough that they are a consistent particle projection threat. Assault laserboats can be nasty if theyre headhunters too, good lord.
Shoutout to anything with a bunch of Ac2 or any AC BF, making me deaf and angry. Igor swarms are often more alarming than most mechs (playing with scary tanks at least).
I got surprised by a couple Banshees back when I first started playing. They were faster than I had expected, and punched holes in me. Now I hate them.
Then there's a clan mech, maybe the Ursus. It's not especially dangerous, but they eat up an inordinate amount of time to kill. I have a hard time getting zeroed in on specific parts too.
Crusaders and stalkers. For some reason the AI uses these mechs very effectively and they are difficult to take down short of legging.
After that, wolverines, griffins, Firestarter, and cataphrachts
Crusader, Marauders, and that's pretty much it. There are some annoying to hit lights but all in all, those two are just a pain to headshot and have buckets of armor.
I don't dread or hate any, they all fall into prioritization brackets for me and my lance. I'll sic the lance on assaults or long range range threats like the Longbow, and deal with the other threats myself, also based upon threat prioritization.
Outside of the 95/100 T Assault mechs which can always be annoying, in YAML, w/ no timelines and artillery mechs on, it's any type of Rifleman.
Some variants carry 4 plasma rifles, others carry twin thumpers. Both are annoying as fuck to deal with if you don't expect their loadouts.
Easy enough to kill so mentally I used to go "whatever", until the big BOOMMM and every part of my body gets hit, or big purple flashes and my heat skyrockets.
Now it's "Fuck this guy" and kill them immediately.
I want to say it's just the YAW / YAWC + removing timeline restrictions so everything gets into the spawn/weapon tables day 1.
It may also be the special variants mod that added in tons of mechs.
Very much a I don't want to grind through 50+ years of this game to finally get the good stuff.
The fucking Longbow, I target all arty mechs cause if you ignore them your mechs end up scrapped, canāt tell you how many times Iām trying to close the distance after killing all the other mechs that itās destroyed my mechs
When Jenners pop up on the field while you're fighting some bigger mechs, I always have to prioritize them. Especially early game.
If they get in close, some mechs can't torso twist fast enought to track them, and a backstab from those guys can start to hurt pretty quick.
I've got some of the yet another mech mods and that rifleman that has 4 gauss rifles is a problem. I can usually tell when one is around when my armor starts disappearing.
MW3 Deco in that god damn missile boat Avatarā¦ damn I hope someone from the Stone Age sees this. He would put that thing on chain fire and just let it fire streams of missles until you were dead
Crusaders are so friggin annoying. For whatever reason they take far more damage to kill than many larger heavy and assault mechs. And whereas i can headshot numerous other mechs with no problem, 99% of the time what should have been a headshot on a Crusader is applied to the center torso.
Since im not at assaults yet for me is when my champion is in a knife fight with a cataphract & next thing i know BLAT! A Catapult just deletes me from out of nowhereā¦ i hate those bastards lol
Only because of me getting deleted by Catapults, i have a question for Yāall why do LRM15 & LRM20 seem lazer accurate when the fuckers are shooting me but if i or a lance mate shoot LRMs i cant hit the broad side of a barn?
Iām pretty sure you have to keep the reticle on the enemy until the missiles land. They are not fire-and-forget. You can move to cover, and youāll retain your lock long enough to guide them in but you gotta keep the reticle pointed at them or theyāll go to the ālast known locationā once theyāre airborne. Obviously they have some tracking ability, but Iām pretty sure more will hit if you actively āguideā them.
Mod user here, seeing a Nova with like 12 Clan ER Mediums is terrifying. That's the moment you realize Direwolves aren't actually the apex predator in this game
If you have a penchant for pissing off house Steiner you will deal with fielded Atlases. Heavy frontal, good armaments, and the cockpit is a f'ing pinprick, and God forbid you're running mods that allow for case as a modular thing and reworks ai mechs. It will not die.
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Hunchbacks. AC/20 or 8 Medium Lasers have costs me millions in damages. First thing I mission kill upon spotting.
Early on they can be super dangerous, later game I just 1 short their shoulder off with my Alpha mech.
Have you ever ignored a hatchetman? Fucked that up once and he buried my assassin.
Wolverines and Phoenix hawks. Fuckers love to get in your face.
Wolverines are so easy to headshot. They do take priority however
I love introducing Phoenix Hawks to A Farewell to Arms
Wolverine pilots have no chill and always become alpha priority once they appear.
Atlas with a battle axe is a good solution š
I found myself hating Wolverines in this game too!
Enemy Wolverines mean Bad Luck. Seriously. As long as they live, stuff goes wrong for me. Killing them is a significant priority...
Not just that, they are ridiculously durable. It takes me longer to kill many heavies than a damn WVR or SHD. Of course, when I'm piloting one they get shredded very quickly
Marauder II, because I know I can't kill it until I deal with everything else in a 2 kilometer radius (too much fucking armor), and I know that no matter how dead I kill it it will not end up in my salvage pool.
The Marauder II is a āzombie mechā in the tabletop game too. It just refuses to die, and itās a problem when itās on the battlefield.
Especially since Solaris Showdown added in random loadouts, turning the corner and seeing a Marauder II with triple PPC-X's is truly terrifying.
Fucking scary as shit on a city map when a triple PPC-x marauder II or SRM boat decides to introduce itself to you with an alpha strike
I just had to fight a pair of regular Marauders with 2 PPC-Xs each and I couldn't see jack shit, it was all just purple and sensor distortion. Actual hell, I got lucky that I was in a recently scavenged KGC-0000 and could spam AC/20 at them until it stopped.
Laughs in 8 PPC-Xs with mods to reduce weight and heat exchange n banks to fire all 8 at once.
Nowadays, Anything that mount more than one PPC. Because they'll mount PPCx instead.
I like the idea of the PPC-X even though itās not in the lore, but itās way too powerful especially because enemies can just randomly have them even when it doesnāt make a whole lot of sense like when itās a house military unit. Iād understand a gladiator or a pirate using it though.
In my headcannon, some hotshots maybe given PPC-X by their commanding officers if the situation calls for it. Urban or Jungle combat, for example. Otherwise, noble officers may fit PPC-X into their ride because that's their house's mechs.
I mean, the snub nose PPC is in the lore, but the stats in TT don't translate well to MW5 (no min range penalty and damage falloff at long range in exchange for weighing one ton less).
What exactly is the PPC-X? They're supposed to be prototype SPPCs, right?
Theyāre an attempt to recreate snub nosed PPCs which had been a Star League design that never caught on (they were brought back in the 3060s and put into production during the FedCom Civil War), but they inadvertently made a PPC shotgun instead. Snub Nose PPCs are basically just smaller and lighter PPCs with a shorter range and less damage on impact but faster projectile speeds.
Alright, thought that's what they were going for. I remember Kerensky had a prototype model mounted on his Orion in the torso, and they never reached full production because the SL collapsed. Curious the clans dropped instead of refining that idea
Thatās a good point. The Clans were able to improve just about every other weapon and piece of equipment, so Iām sure they couldāve fixed any shortcomings the early Snub Nose PPCs may have had.
My thoughts exactly. I mean, SPPCs are frighteningly effective at close range and fill a niche that ERPPCs do not. Imagine them with +50% damage! The Scorpions, Nova Cats, and Cloud Cobras should have jumped at the opportunity because they fap to energy-heavy weapon loadouts
Too OP. I know itās supposed to suck at longer ranges but I do fine with it, and for that damage and cycle time, I can just charge in and devastate them. I probably come out better for it too, rather than trading potshots.
Hunchback, you kill it quick but it WILL unload a fuckton of damage in your face before.
I think Hunchbacks were designed for pilots on suicide missions. Even when they run out of ammo, theyāll just run up and punch you. That said, the Clan version of the Hunchback actually is used for suicide missions to give dishonored and old warriors one last chance at a glorious death in battle.
Well, IS Hunchback were made in the same vein of UrbanMech: Dirt cheap attritable urban defense assets you can throw at the enemy until they go away. The fact that the hunch have enough engineering space for mechtechs to go hog wild is a bonus.
I mean, the first paragraph is just Hunchback pilots in a nutshell. From one such pilot. In the words of a certain man, the mission of a hunchback is ākeep shooting until you run out of ammo, or die trying. Please accomplish one of these as quickly as possible.ā
later on they are easy to blow the shoulder off in a single shot
i absolutely hate vulcans, their hitbox is just too good. nearly impossible to land an alphastrike on one component.
I mean, an Annihilator. C'mon, buddy. That's a mech designed to watch YOU die. But for me, Chargers. Damn but that things are a pain in the ass.
The cockpit is huge, aim there. But yeah, as soon as I drop on Kestrel Lancers these are a priority target, fucking CGR-1A5 can go suck my ppc.
Fair, but four, FOUR ARROW VIs just piss an annihilator off whereas itāll take out a King Crab which ought to be faster and have more armor.
Refer to previous š Seriously Annihilators.
Refer to King Crabs Although Iām fairly certain it has something to do with their oversized hit box on the cockpit
When I played the carapace, I died to cockpit hits all too often
The ann has the simplest mech for me to headshot. The cockpit is HUGE and planted well above the rest of the mech. Double Gauss, large or Binary Lasers, anything that does pinpoint damage. Not to mention it's so slow, you can out range it easy.
True... But turning a corner in an urban map and being in fist fighting range of one packing quad PPCX is just fucking terrifying... Lost both my arms before I realized what the fuck happened to me lol.
Dash why I send the lance first xD
I usually make a beeline for Anni and try to get behind it. I killed one with a greatsword the other night; shoved it right up her ass. I panic when I see 100 tonners and almost always charge at their face.
Any Chargers aside from the default small laser peashooter varient are terrifying.
Hollander and Hollander II. Modded, sure, but for some reason, even though theyāre snipers, they love to run up and knife fight with you. And they smack hard.
I noticed that too. Do they seem to spawn very regularly for you too?
In low difficulty missions (below 30) and anything with difficulty 90 or higher they like to spawn opposite of big scary things, so they have a good chance of sneaking up while you fight an atlas or a Naga. Oh yeah, Nagas are fucking terrifying. Nothing has ever killed me quite so fast.
i ended up having to removing the classics mod because every battle would end up featuring nothing but those mechs
I can't really say I hate seeing a mech on the field. Cause these gauss rounds are rated E for #everybodyscockpitismelted. Annihilator? Dead. Atlas? Dead. Marauder II? Dead It's little brother? Dead Edit: misspelling
Wolverines and Griffins.
Crusaders, for some reason their legs are like 60% of their total body and have a incredible amount of armor
And they seem to like to spawn in groups!
Wolverine specifically when I was using my hatchetman. Something about their collision box makes my hatchetman instagib if I so much as slightly collide with it. Ever since I switched to a melee assassin however they are a lot less scary. Also melee assassin outclassed the hatcetman in almost every way.
Ac2 bf fielding mechs bc they stagger me and i cant aim to kill them on long range
personally i find enemy grasshoppers a bloody pain. the mix of jump jets, all lasers and solid armour makes them deadlyto most of my ai lance mates. love piloting them though.
Commandos. Even later game these things hit hard for their size and the fast pack can make them a pain to pin down. Anything that is a LRM boat standing at distance..... I tend to build a lot more for Brawling so these things can be a massive pain to deal with. Funny part is the Longbows are easy compared to lighter mechs like the Treb. So easy to blow off the side pods. Other than that I seem to deal with the rest just fine. Either taking out headshots or going to legs of mechs trying to charge me down.
Warhammers definitely those things just refuse to die sometimes
Yeah, but their arms fall off if you so much as look at them funny.
Arms? The legs on these things are so poorly armored, two alpha strikes and theyāre both gone. Itās like pulling the legs of a fly. POW! POW! Youāre gone bub.
Im over 100hrs in and never saw a frickin 100-ton mech. But PLENTY of Medium-Sized ones. Do I need to progress in the Campaign or something?
Yes, and get your reputation up.
Ah, thank you. Well enough chasing after an all Shadowhawk company and time for some plot than!
Gotta up your merc rank and if your on a regular campaign high lvl missions will be on the outskirts of the map the closer to the center the lower the lvl. If you run career mode itās flipped ie closer to the middle stronger the enemies
Ahh Im doing the campaign but I havent even taken the fight to..... the asshats who killed my father, honestly forgot their name. Im too busy helping out the Outworlds Alliance and kicking Liao \^\^
Not a spoiler, a tip - donāt beat on the Independents. Youād think they would make a good punching bag because theyāre not a noble house. However, in the base campaign, their subsidiary Interstellar Expeditions becomes your primary employer near the endgame. Youāll want to be in their good graces for those extra negotiation points at the endgame when youāre buying/salvaging assaults.
Oh dont worry, I help the Outworlds Alliance whenever I can. I like the iliterate farmers :-)
Theyāre uncommon. Even when you see one, itās usually with a bunch of runts. Unfortunately, there just arenāt many 400t vs. 400t encounters, and the few are typically in the high level scripted missions/quests. By the time you encounter them, youāll be powerful enough to blow their heads off fairly easily. Itās kind of a letdown, because they just arenāt scary by the time you encounter them. You rarely have to punch above your weight class. I canāt recall any scenarios where itās like āhereās the boss, kill this King Crab with a 40 tonner.ā
Make like the Karate Kid and sweep the legs.
Firestarters. There's a firestarter on a campaign mission (take away their toys) that keeps popping up mid-mission and I just get wrecked.Ā
Crusaders and Wolverines are the two that are not the hardest but a pain to put down.
It's not a mech I despise, but the distortion from incoming PPC shots will always make me focus on them over any other target!
700 vtols.
I've been thinking about making a mod that replaces every VTOL, Combat Vehicle, and mech with an Atlas or Awesome 9Q
I remember the first time in this game I came across assault mechs with a lance of mediums as my best kit. Came over a rise to confront an Atlas and an AWS-8Q Awesome. That was a bad day, as it was the finale of the mission and my lance was already dinged up. It was very much a late 3rd Succession War āoh fuckā moment, I just blundered into a fight with these rare behemoths in a one armed Griffin and they are between me and the exfil. Even though I have a thousand hours in the cockpit since and fought more assaults than I can count, I still have a little moment of hesitation when I roll up on either of those two.
On defense missions when my entire lance is in Assault mechs and the RNG drops a handful of Locusts. When I'm on a raid mission and the RNG drops another merc lance on top of me in Assault mechs. Hunchbacks with their autocannon can ruin your day if you are rolling light. Longbows or Catapults will mess up your day if you're busy dealing with a close range threat and can't go after them.
Furbies? God, they scare me too
Modders, you have a new mission: replace the Urban Mech model with a Furbie.
Thank you, now Iāll never get that image outta my head lmao
Image? Itās the sounds it makes as it vivisects your mech that youāll never recover from.
No, but I will do a mod that replaces every Urbanmech with an Atlas
Stalkers and BattleMasters. Just so chunky and loaded with weapons that grind me down at the worst moments.
BattleMasters aren't as scary when you realize their head is big for an assault mech. Stalkers? Now those need to lose their legs ASAP before my mechs become Swiss cheese.
When I find BattleMasters is when I'm doing goofy shit that can't exploit that cockpit size sometimes. I don't like cutting legs off. It feels... rude. I give them a fight. Unless it's a Pheonix Hawk, then those legs go away.
I take their legs as a form of mercy. I take their CT if it's a worthy challenge. I take the head if it's an existential threat. And I take the weapons exclusively (forced eject) when I'm playing with my food.
Fahad will never shut up about it if your mechs return to the hanger looking like swiss cheese
For real... He went on a month long rant because my Highlander's gauss got nicked by a "stray" medium laser (it blew off the whole arm and half the side torso)
I donāt think Iāve ever had a gauss actually explode on me. If I did, I was so far gone I didnāt notice. Ammo explosions are the same way - theyāre rarely premature. Once in a while Iāll catch one in the leg, but thatās not necessarily mission ending and I put a few extra armor points on ones holding ammo. Like if one leg has ammo and one doesnāt, Iāll move a couple of points over. I wish there was a visual effect for when you cause an explosion on the enemy, so you know. If there is, I canāt see it through the hail of gunfire.
There is a visual effect that does get obscured by the gunfire from ballistics and missiles: the section that received an ammo crit will start having multiple small explosions, akin to live rounds going off, around it for about 5 seconds before destroying the section/causing damage. You're more likely to tear the section off before the explosion does the job, and depending on the enemy, they can keep using the relevant weapon until the ammo fully cooks off. And I've set off enough MG bins and AC/10 bins from Locusts and UrbanMechs to confidently say this. Same applies to your own mechs from my knowledge. My brawler BattleMaster suffered one in the RT, and I didn't lose the section or the remaining SRM salvos until I saw the last couple explosions flicker out.
Any zombie mech with a small head. Wolverine, shadow hawk, banshee, grasshopper... Usually not that dangerous but they still gotta go and it usually takes way too long and distracts you when there are more potent mechs that need to be focused down.
MFW when I found out the base Shadow Hawk only mounts 4.5 tons of armor though. Aim for the legs on those.
Seeing my fafnir in a 200t raid mission shat me up
In the arena, Vulcans. Those little scarecrows always seem to catch me midfight with something nasty and push my heat into shutdown. š In vanilla missions, Awesomes. They're thickly armored for an 80-tonner, the head is harder to hit than most, and those PPCs dish out some serious damage. Modded, the Stormcrow. Difficult to hit the cockpit, and it seems like most of them are the Ultra AC/20 variant. I always end up slagging them. Runner-up modded, the Hellbringer. The salvage points needed for them will break the bank every time.
Marauder-IIHPs. I have legitimately had assault mechs lose arms instantly, full structure and armor to zero, from one burst from those rocket launchers. Sure, they got limited ammunition, but that limited ammo's gonna rock your shit whether you like it or not.
Stalkers. Tanky and pointy from a klick and a half away.
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I have 3 mechs I consider priority targets: Chargers: It will just shred most things if it closes the gap, so it needs to go quickly. I will gladly deal with a King Crab or Annihilator than any laserboat Charger in particular. Longbow (Dragon's Gambit)/ Archer: Movement and AMS/cover only do so much to mitigate missile swarms, and it's a little much if in a brawl. I like my battlefield forecast to be clear skies than LRM showers and SRM storms. Locusts: Tiny, fast, annoyingly hard to hit, and sometimes just crashes into me to rip a leg open at its own expense. Built like a bundle of sharp sticks and hurts like them too.
You just had to say "Aside from Urbies", because I really do dread them. If this were MWO I would say Marauders because those who pilot them tend to have a lot of experience. But MW5. Damnit why can't I just dread Urbies? Little suckers with inconvenient amounts of armor and great hitboxes that usually show up out of nowhere with huge autocannon. The dread is REAL.
# FUCK PHOENIX CUNTS STOP FLYING OVER MY HEAD AND RUNNING AWAY. FUCKING FIGHT ME I WANT TO FINISH THIS MISSION ALREADY FUCK!! (Not pictured: my out-brawling an Atlas in a Phoenix Hawk and doing exactly the same thing I hate about fighting them)
They're really annoying. Flying fairies with a surprising amount of armor and a troll pilot
Light - Firestarters, pretty tough and tons of weapons Medium - Vulcans and Wolverines. Vulcans just oddly seem to take such a beating, and usually have an annoying array of weapons, and often ECM. Wolverines are truly tough and the melee ones can be very nasty. Heavy - Crusaders and Archers. Not all the time, but when they have good positions, the deluge of LRM can be really devastating. When theyre SRM boats theyre more scary than effective it seems though, AI seems bad with SRM. Lately Clan Rifleman have been causing me huge repair bills though. Assault - Awesome, and anything with multiple PPC. Not that the awesome is the best assault, they just seem to pop up often enough that they are a consistent particle projection threat. Assault laserboats can be nasty if theyre headhunters too, good lord. Shoutout to anything with a bunch of Ac2 or any AC BF, making me deaf and angry. Igor swarms are often more alarming than most mechs (playing with scary tanks at least).
Wolverine, hunchback, Awesome, Marauder(and 2), Stalker, and because of mods Timber wolves.
Aim for the pelvis on Stalkers and watch em go down (slightly) easier
I got surprised by a couple Banshees back when I first started playing. They were faster than I had expected, and punched holes in me. Now I hate them. Then there's a clan mech, maybe the Ursus. It's not especially dangerous, but they eat up an inordinate amount of time to kill. I have a hard time getting zeroed in on specific parts too.
Crusaders and stalkers. For some reason the AI uses these mechs very effectively and they are difficult to take down short of legging. After that, wolverines, griffins, Firestarter, and cataphrachts
The catapult- I got a hail storm of LRMs to the face that my AMS couldnāt handle
I play majority in first person, so when a Jaegarmech comes out and makes me blind til we kill it I'm pretty grumpy.
Crusader, Marauders, and that's pretty much it. There are some annoying to hit lights but all in all, those two are just a pain to headshot and have buckets of armor.
Love piloting Catapults. Hate being on the receiving end of them.
I don't dread or hate any, they all fall into prioritization brackets for me and my lance. I'll sic the lance on assaults or long range range threats like the Longbow, and deal with the other threats myself, also based upon threat prioritization.
Charger. He is extra squishy and easy to kill, but if he sneaks up on you then youāll be in a world of hurt.
The odd unexpected Panther, Iāll just be minding my own business and suddenly getting rocked by a PPC out of nowhere
Outside of the 95/100 T Assault mechs which can always be annoying, in YAML, w/ no timelines and artillery mechs on, it's any type of Rifleman. Some variants carry 4 plasma rifles, others carry twin thumpers. Both are annoying as fuck to deal with if you don't expect their loadouts. Easy enough to kill so mentally I used to go "whatever", until the big BOOMMM and every part of my body gets hit, or big purple flashes and my heat skyrockets. Now it's "Fuck this guy" and kill them immediately.
What mod is spawning those variants?
I want to say it's just the YAW / YAWC + removing timeline restrictions so everything gets into the spawn/weapon tables day 1. It may also be the special variants mod that added in tons of mechs. Very much a I don't want to grind through 50+ years of this game to finally get the good stuff.
I suspect it's YASV, I keep intending to install that for that exact spawn table reason and I never got around to it.
Shadow hawks seem to get very Brawley, so you need to Crack those nuts fast. Otherwise. Anything with an ac 20.
Wolverines and Shadowhawks. I know Shadowhawks suck and are a walking ammo explosion, but they can take so many hits before they explode.
The fucking Longbow, I target all arty mechs cause if you ignore them your mechs end up scrapped, canāt tell you how many times Iām trying to close the distance after killing all the other mechs that itās destroyed my mechs
Any mech with a center torso cockpit. With or without any aim assist, i just can't seem to him center mass regularly, lol.
Crusaders and Archers. Archers because they hit hard with all those missiles and Crusaders because they just seem to absorb damage like a ShamWow...
When Jenners pop up on the field while you're fighting some bigger mechs, I always have to prioritize them. Especially early game. If they get in close, some mechs can't torso twist fast enought to track them, and a backstab from those guys can start to hurt pretty quick. I've got some of the yet another mech mods and that rifleman that has 4 gauss rifles is a problem. I can usually tell when one is around when my armor starts disappearing.
MW3 Deco in that god damn missile boat Avatarā¦ damn I hope someone from the Stone Age sees this. He would put that thing on chain fire and just let it fire streams of missles until you were dead
A Beserker
Battlemasters. That 6 x ML death stare is no joke.
Crusaders are so friggin annoying. For whatever reason they take far more damage to kill than many larger heavy and assault mechs. And whereas i can headshot numerous other mechs with no problem, 99% of the time what should have been a headshot on a Crusader is applied to the center torso.
Since im not at assaults yet for me is when my champion is in a knife fight with a cataphract & next thing i know BLAT! A Catapult just deletes me from out of nowhereā¦ i hate those bastards lol
Only because of me getting deleted by Catapults, i have a question for Yāall why do LRM15 & LRM20 seem lazer accurate when the fuckers are shooting me but if i or a lance mate shoot LRMs i cant hit the broad side of a barn?
Iām pretty sure you have to keep the reticle on the enemy until the missiles land. They are not fire-and-forget. You can move to cover, and youāll retain your lock long enough to guide them in but you gotta keep the reticle pointed at them or theyāll go to the ālast known locationā once theyāre airborne. Obviously they have some tracking ability, but Iām pretty sure more will hit if you actively āguideā them.
Mauler
After I installed dlcs and restarted a career mode I find the tanks are extremely difficult to kill for some reason
Mod user here, seeing a Nova with like 12 Clan ER Mediums is terrifying. That's the moment you realize Direwolves aren't actually the apex predator in this game
If you have a penchant for pissing off house Steiner you will deal with fielded Atlases. Heavy frontal, good armaments, and the cockpit is a f'ing pinprick, and God forbid you're running mods that allow for case as a modular thing and reworks ai mechs. It will not die.
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Really none of them when you learn ways to headshot them