Melee Build

[Gengis Dhen]

What secondary role/loadout is best?

[ImHelping]

Whatever you are comfortable with. No, really.

With or without melee boosting equipment, or a preference for small weaponry spam like a grasshopper. Focusing on punching or DFA being more frequent needs to fit into the teamwork of your lance.

The most powerful punch in the world will have a rough time if the mech is getting focused down because the rest of your lance is keep away LRM/Sniper bots. While even slapdash thunderbolt that happens to have some small lasers smacking someone upside the head can make all the difference in allowing your assault mechs to get some nice and easy killshots if your lance tactics give it the leeway to go on a punch frenzy.

Design your punch bots around what you know, with the tactics you know you can win with. You want to be able to MAKE those punches (and come out alive). A more standard smack every 3-4 turns with a less melee optimized mech is better than 5-10 turns doing nothing waiting for your "perfect punch"

[MrMurLock]

A jumper with ALOT of MGs or small lasers works wonders. Enough evasion pips help keep you alive, but you need other mechs to support it and keep it from getting focused down.

[Boomer_8086]

My favorite is the Banshee. An AC/5 or 10, a LL, and lots of support weapons and extra armor. She can hang back with the lance, add a little firepower to the mix and then act as a guard and bash whoever is dumb enough to close in. Or rush forward, become a decoy, and body slam anyone unfortunate enough to get in her way, all the while being supported by fire from the lance.

[Rabidnid]

The Orion is my current scout and the Shadow Hawk my ex scout. The Highlander is my hybrid and the other two highlanders are AC-20 builds.

Prior to that I used T-Bolt AC-20 builds and before that Orion AC-20 builds. Everything else is max armour, ML, SL and SRMs.


https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1009276572151247900/E7914DA7A568EF983F12FC1FE062B6065AC72F44/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1009276572151247632/B86982D2E5E31D2794B823F099F1CBE99FF577A3/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1009276572151247303/C99A19CB3A92EE1A1C5CB8E3496BC9A1309EB8D3/

[Alt-F4]

Generally speaking, your best bet is laser vomit. Lasers, particularly medium lasers, offer some of the best damage to tonnage ratios in the game. You are going to close on the target and vomit lasers at it. You're going to build up heat, but you have designed this build to, rather than moderate weapons fire to cool off, run up and smack your opponent around.

Jump Jets are almost mandatory for all optimized builds because of their impact on mobility. The ability to move free of terrain obstructions and freely position afterward while still enabling guarded status or the ability to shoot is invaluable. So, in theory, you could DFA if you feel you have the leg armor to support it. You could also try and jump in behind an opponent to get in shots at the rear, but these will be rather inopportune.

My own experience is that attempts to build 'mechs that do this, unless they are lights or mediums, simply do not have the mobility needed to make this strategy reliable. Generally speaking, you should plan on having at least one encounter where your weapons are coming from the front, possibly two, before you have the opportunity to melee - if it is a heavy/assault. If you have a medium decked out with arm mods so it can punch out an Atlas, then you probably don't have enough tonnage to really do much else for a secondary role.

It would be advisable to give this pilot sensor lock, master tactician, and bulwark. Sensor lock will be used to drop initiative while closing or to lock targets that can't be viewed or engaged because of limited weapon range. It's the "I've got nothing else to do this round but bracing seems like a waste" move. Master tactician allows you to have improved initiative to move before threats of the same tonnage class, or reserve past them to preserve an advantaged situation - IE - you can sprint into a tree line ahead of an advancing threat, reserve your turn on their next turn to preserve your evasion counters/guarded status (works really well when used with vigilance), then run up to bop them in the face after your lance has taken its time picking targets it wants to shoot. Then, on the next turn, you can move before the big guns so that your melee attack didn't leave you exposed. If you have flashpoint, it would be advisable to seek out a cyclops for even further improved initiative.

SRMs are also a good 'because I have room' addition, as 4 tons can net you 48 damage baseline; 72 damage with ++ versions.

There aren't really many other roles for a melee-focused 'mech, at the moment. With the melee as the primary goal, the secondary role is what you can do when approaching melee and when disengaging from melee. Obviously, LRMs, PPCs, Gauss Rifles - those are going to conflict somewhat with your goal. Therefor, you are just looking to stack damage into the spare tonnage, hardpoints, and heat. You're not going to blast something at long range with a PPC one round and then smack it in the face, the next - unless it's a light, or something, that just thought it would come up to ask directions to its grave.

The Dragon is a generally bad 'mech, but it does come with baseline melee improvements that you could look at tanking it up for if you want a Heavy 'mech to initiative down into medium and light territory. If you have flashpoint, the hatchetman is an obvious baseline melee choice. The Banshee is popular for assaults because of its large number of support hardpoints, relative speed, and heavy armor. The Grasshopper is also very popular for its large number of support hardpoints and good speed. The Firestarter is a decent option for Lights... but... if you're going to invest the tonnage in a Light that does melee, you may as well consider DFA-damage reducing leg mods and just having Locusts or Firestarters launch themselves into opponents. I haven't tried this, yet, but the prospect of having an improvised Arrow IV artillery system composed of a Locust with 8 jump jets is amusing to me.

[The Giant Mimir]

I also vote for sensor lock, because there will be times, if your melee 'Mech is too slow, that you can't punch/kick and you don't want to DFA. Maximum jump jets and mobility, mods for bonus melee damage and reduced self damage DFA, gyro to best avoid incoming hits.

I don't like Banshees for melee because they are too slow, regardless of punching power. Similarly Hatchetmen. If you go for it, you definitely will benefit from something to fire as you close distance - you may not need to worry too much about heat, because you can bleed it off during melee. But the lighter the 'Mech, the more it may benefit from indirect fire - staying out of LoS before charging in for a punch/support weapon combo.

Defensively you need to have a plan to melee from cover, and use bulwark for damage resistance, or only melee at the end of a long run up, for evasion, or preferably both. If you melee a target early in a fight, you can easily find the punching 'Mech with no defence against follow-up fire from opponents. Melee is stronger at the end of a fight, or where the enemy has overextended and is separated from the main force.

Melee in packs is very strong as you share armour, increase chances of knockdown status, and can limit enemy mobility by swarming them.

Be careful, pilots living in melee range of an enemy can rarely, but inevitably, get their cockpit punched off, killing the pilot in one blow.

Sorry Dekker.

[Gengis Dhen]

@Alt-F4, yer it's the 2nd role thats interesting as the melee mech closes in.
It's got to have good armour and melee sure but how to use it best when not in h2h combat.
I play RT as it gives me more options... I like the idea of mg or sm/med lasers as the role wouldn't require too much marksmanship.

[Mistfox]

If you can pack in some flamers, do so as well, the added heat can force an enemy mech shutdown so the guy on the receiving end of your punches won't be able to return the favor.

[Twelvefield]

For a while, I had a pure mêlée Banshee. No weapons, just arm mods and gyros and jump jets and full armour. It was just barely fast enough to wade into combat and it had a lot of armour which allowed it to survive first contact with the enemy, even focus fire. It would easily clobber any mech, sometimes even one-punch them to death. Glorious!

The downside was taking stability damage. I should have put in protection for that, since once it gets knocked down it loses initiative which is deadly and it becomes a stationary target. Then the arms come off and it's mostly useless. Best piloted by your commander figure, since they can't die.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Best piloted by your commander figure, since they can't die.

Hmmm...now I feel like making a commander by the name of Mohammad Ali

[Twelvefield]

That is a damned good idea! Next time. Float like a Grasshopper, sting like a Banshee!

[Rabidnid]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Best piloted by your commander figure, since they can't die.

Hmmm...now I feel like making a commander by the name of Mohammad Ali

I had one called Captain Scarlet.

[ImHelping]

I love how "Your commander can't die!" can loop around into a real rude wake up call if you buy into that hype in the early game before you have your pick of backup pilots.

"You just wait until the commander finishes growing his legs back in 78 more days!"

Even in the endgame with a maxed out Argo, you can replace even wildly irresponsible self damage on a mech vastly faster than a 10 Guts pilot recovering from a single injury (unless they turbo nerfed repairs/made hospital stay time less cartoonish while I've been away)

1 cockpit reinforcment is worth any amount of com systems, unless the fight is already so one sided you don't need com systems.

[Twelvefield]

That's an interesting way of looking at it. My commander remains one of my least-used pilots because she keeps getting obliterated and has to grow back from the tooth they found on the moon of the planet. So, yes, in the early game a horribly disfigured commander is a liability since they take up barracks room and can't be fired. I try to avoid having them "mostly dead" in the first place.

I don't know about trading cockpit reinforcement for comms, though. In the late game there's so much guts going around that a mech is going to be cut into bread-box sized pieces before the pilot has a chance to die. If I have a good comms mod, I can boost morale without having to spring for the dreaded low-gee swimming pool. Morale on my ship is never great, since the pilots resent having to salute a disembodied tooth half the time. so I value comms.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

That's an interesting way of looking at it. My commander remains one of my least-used pilots because she keeps getting obliterated and has to grow back from the tooth they found on the moon of the planet. So, yes, in the early game a horribly disfigured commander is a liability since they take up barracks room and can't be fired. I try to avoid having them "mostly dead" in the first place.

I don't know about trading cockpit reinforcement for comms, though. In the late game there's so much guts going around that a mech is going to be cut into bread-box sized pieces before the pilot has a chance to die. If I have a good comms mod, I can boost morale without having to spring for the dreaded low-gee swimming pool. Morale on my ship is never great, since the pilots resent having to salute a disembodied tooth half the time. so I value comms.

Yeah, that's the exact problem with calling the commander "Unkillable".

But I'm amused at the 180 turn around with you going "Best piloted by your commander figure, since they can't die." to admitting the reality of why such advice is often misleading.

As for cockpit airbags, It's not about the "Chance to die", it's about so much as a single scratch benching your pilots even with every bit of lostech band-aids researched.

Time is money and salvage, and many people make the strange mistake of only thinking about "Replacement pilots" in terms of death, not how often you need replacements for live ones.

Which leads to the paradox of say... complaining about your commander taking up medbay space, but being perfectly willingly to fill medbay space with pilots you have to pay to sit around doing nothing because "Not like they will die".

Nothing like being able to chain more missions in a row despite stray machinegun fire pining off your armor, to be able to throw money at your morale problems with plenty leftover for the above mentioned zero G pool. And then pay for hobby projects like keeping a control group of rookies who are locked inside the sim pods never sent on missions to prove how useless sim pods are.