The key thing with dragons is that they are as fast as a a big medium, say a Shadowhawk, and slightly more punchy.
But they are that fast due to having a big engine which means they cannot really mount any more weapons than a medium mech.
Personally I figure this means you should capitalise on the punch factor and point blank range and use them as melee brawlers if you use them at all. Jumpjets and flamethrowers is thus actually a pretty good combination!
@lithium Youch, when I ran that mission I had a Grasshopper, a Catapult, a Thunderbolt and a Jaegermech and it was still not a fun time. I essentially had the Grasshopper jumpjet off to melt the escaping trucks whilst everyone else engaged in fight time with the swarming enemy mechs.
Even so I still ended up blowing one of the ammo crates after I saw that four enemies were clustered around it. Eight mechs plus turrets AND the side objective leading to arguably my best mech off chasing vehicles was getting messy.
To add - I got a bunch of heavy mechs early by hunting for those missions where you have to fight 'old guard' or whatever, that tends to send you up against a lance of heavies with half armour, so I took lots of flamethrowers to cook the pilots out and steal their big mechs. Or shot off side torsos before pushing them over with volleys of LRMs. It was absolutely worth taking damage or even losing mechs in order to salvage 65 ton heavies.
I did once forget to take my contact lenses out before going to sleep then woke up the next morning with my eyes feeling awful.
Then I put in a pair of contact lenses and wondered why I was also apparently mostly blind. It was scary! Then realization dawned.
New favourite thing: My Star League Defense Force Highlander assault mech with a Gauss cannon and double heat sinks along with very high grade missile launchers. I dropped one ton of LRM ammo for more armour to help prevent damage or loss of precious, precious lostech, but otherwise left it untouched. It jumps around all day and ruins people - thanks to Gunnery 10/Tactics 9 I even used the Gauss to snipe off an Orion's head and end a tough brawl in one go.
New least favourite thing: SRM carriers getting behind me then surviving the attempt to kill them with 4 structure remaining, leading to them coring out my Grasshopper and killing a very experienced mechwarrior. Honourable mention given to armless griffons using DFA to land on a Thunderbolt and crush the cockpit.
@lithium Also a small laser does 20 damage, compared to 25 for a medium, plus half the weight and dramatically less heat generation.
If you have the ability to get close enough to use them they are amazing weapons.
@jaded High reputation increases contract payout significantly and you can run it up by skipping payment for a few crappy low skull missions. Not sure if it is that worthwhile but there is a definite benefit. Plus better store prices.
On the less positive note, the RNG hates me. My Grasshopper, my heaviest mech, was melting some fools in lights when it got knocked over. No big deal, it got back up and melted more people but then the RNG demon struck. A spider with no arms fired two medium lasers at the braced Grasshopper, one hit the head. Now two wounds suffered.
A Firestarter center torso and one leg combination pelted with its machine guns and one of the rounds caught the head. Now three wounds. Then a Jenner in the distance fired and one of the SRM hit the head. Pilot killed, mech disabled.
He actually died as well, a Gunnery 7, Piloting 8, Guts 6, Tactics 6 pilot. The enemy fire did not even breach the cockpit armour and I do not want to think about how low the odds of random fire from three light mechs in a row all hitting the cockpit were. It happened all in a row as well.
@lithium Either way I have replaced the Shadowhawk in my lineup with a Grasshopper. I refit it to mount seven medium lasers and six small lasers, it jumpjets up to people then melts them.
22 heat sinks also (including the ten in engine). It kind of needs them.
@lithium Sadly nothing as logical as that, each mech has its own unique damage and the only way to really tell is to look at one in a match.
Or check this spreadsheet
So for whatever reason a Shadowhawk punches for 85, other 55 ton medium mechs with hands punch for 70. The Shadowhawk actually hits harder in melee than most heavies.
@lithium It is heavily weighted on tonnage, but there are apparently other factors. A Vindicator does 55 punch damage for example whilst a Blackjack (the same weight) does 40. I think it comes down to if a mech has hands or not?
@arkandel We are talking the talk of the Space Robot.
Also I think that the best role of the Shadowhawk is definitely a brawler mech, I loaded mine up with two SRM6, and SRM2 and a larger laser in the arm, but I think a medium might be better combined with a bunch of jumpjets.
Basically it runs at people firing short ranged missiles then starts to punch them, a Shadowhawk does I think the most melee damage of any medium mech so this is fairly devastating.
I just ran into a mission where I had to kill a scout Lance, which was a jenner, a spider and a panther. All had three quarters armour but no issue with my large laser refit Blackjack, LRM Centurion, SRM punch Shadowhawk and a stock Vindicator.
There was also a reinforcement lance who turned up atop a hill and started to shoot down at me, all with 3/4 armour. TWO Griffins, a Centurion and a Vindicator. Needless to say this was horrible and bloody and degenerated into overheated, out of ammo mechs pinking each other with medium lasers as bits fell off them.
One thing that I have noticed? It is 1 salvage piece if you core out a center torso, 2 salvage pieces if you break off the legs, 3 pieces if the mech was incapacitated thanks to the pilot being knocked out.
So if you blow both side torsos off a mech then break a leg causing it to fall over and knock out the pilot? That gets you 3 pieces of salvage. Slightly odd.
@lithium I am now several hours into the campaign, yes, this game is pretty great.
That said I managed to get my Shadowhawk knocked over by SRM tanks then cored out leading to two months of refit and repair along with the pilot being in Space Hospital for three months. Ooops.
@lithium Four hours now!
But I am at home, with a mug of tea, with the week free from work. The weather is even foul so I have every excuse not to go outside!
Plus the fridge is stocked with real ale.
One method I have seen work pretty well, is to allow one to suffer crippling injuries in order to turn failure on rolls into dramatic success. At opportune moments that is.
Did your roll to lead a charge into battle fail due to the vagaries of the dice? Well you can instead win and be a triumphant hero but you will lose a hand or an eye. That was done (not very consistently) on Star Crusade, Sofia for example lost a hand in seizing an enemy warship twice the size of her own.
This allows people to be huge badasses, encourages them to suffer and makes said suffering or crippling injuries really memorable. Not very many people want to have one hand because they critically failed the one time, but having one hand because they lost it storming the Citadel of Whatever and got to be the hero in the process? Suddenly that is a positive.
So I am on my couch, wrapped in a duvet and supremely comfortable. I am on holiday this week and have had an utterly lazy, relaxing day.
But the battery on my tablet is almost empty and I should go grocery shopping, whilst I am not wearing socks and my feet will get briefly chilly if I get up. Woe is me.
One of the annoying peeves I always had with the code on Arx was that +task/work was not automatic if you end the week with unused task supports, you could actually miss out on not insignificant income/resources through forgetting or not realizing you could spam a command a couple of times on a Sunday.
This amuses me greatly, especially when the view pans up in the trailer scene:
@thenomain I came up with the best solution to this issue.
I booked all of next week off work along with buying sufficient nice bottled beers and ales to fill an entire cupboard in my kitchen.
Next week I am going to do nothing but read, game, go for long walks then every evening try a few new beers.
