How to make Ballistics work well

[Tech Enthusiast]

So, I am kinda at a loss on how to make Balistics work for Mia.
Given she has all balistics based skills, I keep trying to outfit mechs to suit her. But whatever I do, she always feels like a useless addition to the star. While everyone else is easily getting gold status on damage done every mission, she more often than not goes bronze or silver at best.

I realize damage done is not the most important, as less damage at the correct spots (focused) could easily outdo a more damage setup. Yet,...
...when it comes to kills, she is at about 1/3rd of the xp gained, so very few kills as well.

While missiles are great at sniping annoying stuff from afar and do great damage up close,... all things energy based just seems to be the clear winner in about every category. It is easy to do a lot of damage and very easy to snipe cockpits or other parts.

Basically:
Is the balance THIS off, or is there a way to make balistiscs work better? Like I don't claim to be great at building mech setups at all. Just hit me with something that works, or even better: A general rule of thumb for balistics.

Example:
For energy weapons it is clear that PPCs are for sniping, Pulse lasers are for making sure your damage lands where you want it to and normal lasers are for ton efficient damage.
How do the various balistic weapons compare?

[Tech Enthusiast]

Originally posted by Geeves:

I will say that quad UAC10 solid is the superior headshot build at least.

In theory, maybe. But not for NPCs.
As a player you have to use quite different logic really. Mia however, won't ever make a headshot build work, no matter what weapon she gets.

With laz0rs however, she melts stuff eitherway, more by accident, then intent, but she does ;-)

[Mr.Kill]

Ballistics take up too tonnage to be useful until you get assault or heavy mechs. Once you have a timber wolf you can stack dual LBX AC10s with plenty of ammo. Otherwise we'll have to wait and see if they'll give us RACs (i.e innersphere mission DLC pack or something) or other great ballistics or maybe buffs to ballistics.

[P.J]

Mia is kinda of a useless character that you have to drag along like a chained bullet and will eventually be causing you trouble. I wish we could fire star mate because she would have been the first to get the boot.

As for the ballistic, the Battletech PC game of 2019 had them to be the best weapons in the game (aka dual LBX/10 or UAC/10 ripping anything). In MW5:Merc, 2 x missile boats in a lance could wreck about anything until they ran out of ammo. In Clan, lasers is the go-to weapon by a mile since they dumb down Gauss and PPC to almost be worse than ballistic weapons are. This in IMHO.

[talemore]

Kit Fox with UAC10 1 and 1/2 ton ammo
And 4 ER laser. Has around the same firepower as any other Kit Fox build 51,2

Kit Fox LRM + ERPPC is still keeping the highest firepower rating while SRM+ERPPC is the same as UAC10+ ER Laser kit Fox

[Geeves]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Originally posted by Geeves:

I will say that quad UAC10 solid is the superior headshot build at least.

In theory, maybe. But not for NPCs.
As a player you have to use quite different logic really. Mia however, won't ever make a headshot build work, no matter what weapon she gets.

With laz0rs however, she melts stuff eitherway, more by accident, then intent, but she does ;-)

Headshot build is for the player, I always thought that was understood. NPCS and the enemy all have accuracy and target locations based on a die roll. Headshot build for NPC makes no sense.

Now as a player quad UAC10 you can double tap and down two mechs in quick succession if they are near each other and advancing on you.

And fortunately this game looooooves to throw the mechs with nice big juicy head hitboxes at you

[Clever Name]

Originally posted by P.J:

As for the ballistic, the Battletech PC game of 2019 had them to be the best weapons in the game (aka dual LBX/10 or UAC/10 ripping anything). In MW5:Merc, 2 x missile boats in a lance could wreck about anything until they ran out of ammo. In Clan, lasers is the go-to weapon by a mile since they dumb down Gauss and PPC to almost be worse than ballistic weapons are. This in IMHO.

I also used UAC5s in Battletech to good effect; stacked on an Annihilator.

Anyway, I agree. LRMs in MW5: Mercs are much more broadly useful than they seem to be here. Mainly, I suspect, because late-game enemy mechs get far more armor than they did in Mercs, along with probable damage reduction to armor and structure bonuses.

[Slap Happy Pappy]

first, they need to make gauss rifles hit scan.
Then they need to double ammo per ton.
Finally, they need to double effective ranges on all projectile weapons. They should reach farther than a medium laser.

[Lloyd_Marshall]

Originally posted by Geeves:

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

And fortunately this game looooooves to throw the mechs with nice big juicy head hitboxes at you

Really? Because I have a hard time tagging the cockpits even from point blank (I like my brawler lazerboats). Could it be that I'm doing it wrong? Also does anyone know how to explain damage settings? I know what Alpha and DPS are but when I arm my mechs with any ballistic weapons those always look worse than if I used lasers and missiles. I want to use the big boomsticks and curb stomp some spheroids.

[Lloyd_Marshall]

Originally posted by Mr.Kill:

Ballistics take up too tonnage to be useful until you get assault or heavy mechs. Once you have a timber wolf you can stack dual LBX AC10s with plenty of ammo. Otherwise we'll have to wait and see if they'll give us RACs (i.e innersphere mission DLC pack or something) or other great ballistics or maybe buffs to ballistics.

I was very disappointed the Clans didn't have my mega gattling gun. My Mech 5 builds with a Jagermech and RAC 2s are montrous and fun.

[Alpha2518]

Originally posted by Lander1:

I have no issues with getting gold damage from Mia using stock omni pod sets that include ballistics. That being said it's a race between Mia's Ballistics and Naomi's LRM's on who will run dry on Ammo first.. Could be you're running out of Ammo and not scanning for the Ammo Crates?

Could you share best practice for the rest of us?

[insufferable-child]

the UAC can be spam clicked at the risk of jams, meaning the effective DPS is significantly higher than listed, but it is best deployed in boats (such as a bunch of uac/2s or 5s) to mitigate the impact of jams. this also means they are better for you, who will take advantage of shot spam, and are not as good for the npcs, who might prefer LBX. i prefer the solid shot version, because the standard version is pretty unwieldy at more than medium range while the solid versions allow you to rapidly put all damage on one component at fairly long ranges.

the LBX is fine, but the lack of spamability means that it only has better sustain on chassis with a low number of ballistic slots where a UAC jam would be devastating. overall i do not think they have enough to differentiate from lasers to make up for the weight, but they probably have a niche in builds that run too hot with lots of lasers. unfortunately (?), most clan mechs have great cooling. additionally the spread and burst fire variants work best at no more than medium range.

the gauss is great. the projectile speed is nearly hitscan, which makes me tend to lead too much and miss anyway. but the rate of fire is low and the weight is very high, with most omnimechs already having severely limited free tonnage for weapons. most omnimechs can also quickly swap to large energy parts and do ERPPCs, which fill a similar niche, but you can carry two for the weight cost of one gauss. the math does not work out great for it excepting maybe on something like the summoner, which usually has like 3 hard points lol.

machine guns are surprisingly niche for most of the game, because you have a lot of great, high damage, relatively high dps weapons with long range that are very easy to build for, meaning that you do not spend a ton of time at an effective engagement distance for this weapon. i tend to take machine guns off to fit armor pods, such as on the stock timber wolf build.

ballistic builds are also in a weird spot with the progression, because most mechs you get have acceptable stock builds of primarily energy weapons, so you have to play a mission or two to get enough xp for pod swaps to make a ballistic build in the first place, and it is not always clear what pods are synergistic. also, the missions tend to be pretty drawn out and there are not always timely ammo resupplies, though ime this impacts missile heavy builds moreso than ballistic builds. i think the way that mechlab displays stats also tends to favor making high dps builds, and makes low dps pinpoint builds look worse on paper than they are in practice.

as for building a mech for mia, or whoever else has ballistic talents that you'd like to exploit, i'd probably just build around a gauss or cluster of autocannons as the main weapon. you will trade heat sinks for ammo, so consider something relatively heat efficient as back up weapon, like regular ER lasers. for yourself, pick gauss or UACs, keeping in mind that the low DPS number in the mechlab will not matter when you can neatly rip the core out of a pristine set of limbs.

[Tankqull]

there need a scatter mechanic implemented for multiple lasers comparable to missles if multiple are fired simultaniously. to circumvent their pinpoint ability. In MWO they implemented a shadowheat mechanic to compensate for this pinpointiness wich i never liked.

[TuxRunner]

I feel light the outlier here but I generally fit my star with a mix of weapons, missiles, lasers, and ballistics. I do this to try and balance heat at any giving range while having viable options to attack anything, no matter if it's far away or behind cover.
The largest, hardest hitting bunch of weapons I do try and tailor for people's strengths, particularly the cooldown strengths.

UAC20-Solid has been my best performing ballistic weapon so far. The damage scales well with just a fractional additional tonnage bump over the 10 and 5. When you get up close and have a good chance of a headshot, double-tap, or even triple, quad tap until the thing jams. It's extremely effective.

To my surprise, AC2's were much more viable in MW5clans than almost any other battletech game I've played. Not a great build build but, might open up some possibilities.

How do you get damage stars with the pilots? Once we started all fielding medium mechs, everyone got gold stars almost all the time. One way to really ensure it -- rotate which mech you're controlling. Be aggressive with one until it's armor wears down, then switch to another and rinse, repeat. Lots of damage for everyone.

[Axeface]

Originally posted by Tankqull:

there need a scatter mechanic implemented for multiple lasers comparable to missles if multiple are fired simultaniously. to circumvent their pinpoint ability. In MWO they implemented a shadowheat mechanic to compensate for this pinpointiness wich i never liked.

Each engine should have a built in capacitor that can only supply so much power, energy weapons should eat up this power like crazy. A few energy weapons, no problem, but at some point you reach a plateau and drawing too much power reduces the damage of all energy weapons fired at that time. Could even draw power away from other systems like cooling or the mechs movement.
Weather could also be something that could neuter lasers.

I really want someone to modernise battletech/mw, but whenever I say it I get attacked so whatever.

[talemore]

Originally posted by Axeface:

Originally posted by Tankqull:

there need a scatter mechanic implemented for multiple lasers comparable to missles if multiple are fired simultaniously. to circumvent their pinpoint ability. In MWO they implemented a shadowheat mechanic to compensate for this pinpointiness wich i never liked.

Each engine should have a built in capacitor that can only supply so much power, energy weapons should eat up this power like crazy. A few energy weapons, no problem, but at some point you reach a plateau and drawing too much power reduces the damage of all energy weapons fired at that time.
Weather could also be something that could neuter lasers.

It is how it works in the game.

You don't shutdown mech. You just deplete available energy.