Does Osiris A really profit from MASC?

[Cik]

In my Professional Opinion^TM, MASC and JJs both produce way too much heat for their usefulness at the moment.

maybe JJs, but MASC is definitely worth having on some mechs. like the shadowcat. it works perfectly on the A variant, as it's main weaponry doesn't produce tons of heat. it helps move you in close where you are effective quickly, and can quickly retreat to the safety of it's brothers if things goes wrong. this is of course aided by it's rather silly profile. thing's impossible to hit if it's running serpentine through a treeline.
(it's also p. good on the owens c, which imo is the best starting light)

[IG142]

Random thought, no idea if it's possible...

Restrict the buy menu to only 2 choices per unit: Prime, and a single variant of the players choice preselected before the joining/starting the game. The variants to choose from are the standard lettered variants we currently have, and later down the road custom mechlab variants.

This prevents people from taking a min-maxed exquisitely custom tailored mech to every specific encounter, and greatly encourages more general designs. Specialization is still possible, but you can't have a whole list of specialists for every possible purpose. They will encounter situations where their specialist will not work well, and will either need to use a custom generalist or fall back to the stock design. This also makes different chassis more unique, since their unique Primes will used more often instead of near-identical variants.

[[IPA] Bravo Cadett]

In my Professional Opinion^TM, MASC and JJs both produce way too much heat for their usefulness at the moment.

QFT^®©

yeah we need some longtime out of supply fight ... like CTI in OperationFlashpoint but CTI is hard to converse for MWLL ... but CTP (capture the planet with maps= 10 times as big as death valley) would be a fapping cool mode ...

sry for this off topic
b2t

its hard to balance a loadout ... some people would strap a medium x puls or CMPL on every thing to kill BA's or a quad MG to deal with vtol's ...

[Taemien]

I don't think this variant was intended to do more then one of those things at a time. I personally think its fine. If you need to JJ, don't masc or fire. Need to Masc out of a tricky situation? Move so you don't need JJ and don't fire. If you're ready to fire, don't masc or JJ.

Its a cheap config that can do a bit. Just not all at once.

[sleet01]

Min-maxing is the (generally derided) practice of tweaking every aspect of a character, mech, vehicle, or what-have-you in a game to make one aspect incredibly powerful while minimizing all drawbacks in other areas.  It's a little different from just designing a character or mech because it combines A) a fetishistic knowledge of the underlying rules of the game, and B) using loopholes or rules that were not initially intended to be combined.  It's generally considered to break games and make them un-fun, but is hard to prevent in games with customization.

Again, just because some of you never use JJs or MASC doesn't mean other people don't, or wouldn't.  Please keep that in mind before suggesting changing the loadouts, which would affect everyone.

I was going to write up a long justification, based on the CBT setting, for why mechs are generally more alike within a chassis family than different, but it doesn't really matter; in-game reasons are really all that matter here.  Mechs that excel at one role but provide *no* means to effect other roles are more of a liability than a benefit to their team.  Single-role-only platforms require much more support from their team in order to survive to fulfill their role - see the Long Tom - than platforms that focus on one role but can handle a second or third.  That's why most mediums that pack a large AC also carry a few token energy weapons, and why MGs appear on so many mechs.  Specialization to an extent is acceptable within a combined-arms game, but for complete specialization (like the LT, or an Osiris without MASC or JJs but mounting several tons of extra heatsinks) to be efficient requires a level of coordination and cooperation that is generally not apparent in the MWLL player base.  So super-specialized variants might be effective for certain players who have clans that can support them (thus making the game un-fun for most other players) but would be less effective for more casual players than the better-rounded models currently provided.

tl,dr: Super-specialized mechs are lame for a number of reasons, imnsho.

[[IPA] Bravo Cadett]

yeah but today (about 1 am or so) i meet some1 that run around in a bushy with rotarys (5?) that just saw of lag's of light mechs ... dunno he got 14/2 stats at the end of the round cause no1 in the team could take him down ...

so teamplay and organisation are things that you dont see on a public game ... it just dont happend ... never... or just in the other team where 2-4 clan TS³ connected player run the show ... thats why mwll sucks hard sometimes for me ... but i just stop playing if it comes to this point (oh got sry, far offtopic again >__< )

so we need mechlab or other mechs that have the same loadout with other equipment ... but this wont happend i bet.
for the Osiris i doesnt care cause, i dont use it, i like the raven more...

[Deathbane]

Im all for people making specialised mechs. Just like how specialised the LRM cougar is.

We all know what happens when a 'useless' generalised bout with two large lasera nd two medium lasers gets within its minimun range. hur hur hur.

[xInVicTuSx]

Uziel C is not useless at all.

Heck, I have strong temptations to minmaxing myself. That MBL on the Thanatos C? You are on my shit list. I will replace you with a heatsink as soon as I can.

[Taemien]

Uziel C is not useless at all.

Heck, I have strong temptations to minmaxing myself. That MBL on the Thanatos C? You are on my shit list. I will replace you with a heatsink as soon as I can.

I have no idea what that thing is for. Other then going "Hey look, I can pee green!"

[[IPA] Thalamus]

Min-maxing is the (generally derided) practice of tweaking every aspect of a character, mech, vehicle, or what-have-you in a game to make one aspect incredibly powerful while minimizing all drawbacks in other areas.  It's a little different from just designing a character or mech because it combines A) a fetishistic knowledge of the underlying rules of the game, and B) using loopholes or rules that were not initially intended to be combined.  It's generally considered to break games and make them un-fun, but is hard to prevent in games with customization.

Again, just because some of you never use JJs or MASC doesn't mean other people don't, or wouldn't.  Please keep that in mind before suggesting changing the loadouts, which would affect everyone.

I was going to write up a long justification, based on the CBT setting, for why mechs are generally more alike within a chassis family than different, but it doesn't really matter; in-game reasons are really all that matter here.  Mechs that excel at one role but provide *no* means to effect other roles are more of a liability than a benefit to their team.  Single-role-only platforms require much more support from their team in order to survive to fulfill their role - see the Long Tom - than platforms that focus on one role but can handle a second or third.  That's why most mediums that pack a large AC also carry a few token energy weapons, and why MGs appear on so many mechs.  Specialization to an extent is acceptable within a combined-arms game, but for complete specialization (like the LT, or an Osiris without MASC or JJs but mounting several tons of extra heatsinks) to be efficient requires a level of coordination and cooperation that is generally not apparent in the MWLL player base.  So super-specialized variants might be effective for certain players who have clans that can support them (thus making the game un-fun for most other players) but would be less effective for more casual players than the better-rounded models currently provided.

tl,dr: Super-specialized mechs are lame for a number of reasons, imnsho.

Just to make it clear I do by no means try to fit the Osiris into a specialized min/max role. I just have the feeling that the Osiris A's current load-out is impractical for most players (I actually think that the current load-out is far too specialized - a change would make it a easier chassis in a lot of different situations imo). Also I don't want to enforce a loadout change by hard, I want to share that thought and discuss it. If it turns out during discussion that my observation is wrong, then that's it 

[VictorMorson]

I really like the MASC on the Osiris A.  It's not something you want to fire all of the time by any means, but given the amount of times it allows me to bug out in a hurry, sprint away from approaching Harassers, dodge missiles down a hill, etc. it's well worth it.  While it makes a lot of heat, it's not something you want to use while on the offensive all of the time anyway - it's purely an "escape and dodge" tool and in that aspect it works perfectly.

In short if you're using it all the time to the point you're having steady heat problems, you're using it wrong.

Note:  For those of you bringing up CBT into this, I'd like to point out there MASC has a huge chance of outright locking your mech up completely and leaving it worse-than-legged on the battlefield.  That is, every single time you use it, it can fail and wreck your mech - and the more you use it, the worse the chance.  The point to this is it's something to be used sparingly for emergencies in it's original intent, to get behind a unit that you REALLY need to or to escape a bad situation.  In that regard, the high heat build-up keeps it very much in-spirit with the original intent.

Just to make it clear I do by no means try to fit the Osiris into a specialized min/max role. I just have the feeling that the Osiris A's current load-out is impractical for most players (I actually think that the current load-out is far too specialized - a change would make it a easier chassis in a lot of different situations imo). Also I don't want to enforce a loadout change by hard, I want to share that thought and discuss it. If it turns out during discussion that my observation is wrong, then that's it 

That said, there's tons of tweaks and changes I'd make if customization was in to a number of variants, outside of just making my own.  Right now without it, "accepting the negative aspects to your style" is just part of selection, unfortunately.  I do think there could be more variants to represent everyone's tastes - in particular in the Medium-Heavy categories - but I can't think of a single design that I wouldn't tweak something on if given the option to make it more effective.

All I'm saying is you're not wrong, possibly, for you.  I like the variant with the MASC, but even I'd consider stripping it off and adding a few more tons of armor if the option was available to me.  But without customization I don't really think it's necessary to make each design as "effective as possible" but just "worth the money you pay for it."  Osiris A fits that right now.

[Profane Arbiter]

it's purely an "escape and dodge" tool and in that aspect it works perfectly.

Aside from simply getting you into battle faster, or to get to TC control points faster, "escape and dodge" is pretty much the main point of MASC. So, it's useful on any mech that needs to scoot and isn't already so slow that a speed boost still won't get ya out of dodge fast enough. Overheating isn't really a factor since you're not usually shooting when high tailing it away from the action (well admittedly the with the osiris's 360 twist it can).

Still, there's an arguement that this is a long range mech so it often already has plenty of distance from the enemy to retreat without the need for MASC, but it still helps.

[xDeityx]

Sorry, I can't help but comment on the silliness of this thread.

To put it in perspective, you're arguing that a single component on one of the variants (which change every update) on one of the assets does not benefit the 'mech when viewed from the narrow lens of your personal playstyle.  In a beta.

Should we start another thread talking about the virtues of the 2 machine guns on the Puma C?  I would rather have more heatsinks.  Does the C3 on the Shadowcat D really need to be there?  Maybe another ton of ammo would be better.

We could nitpick every variant to death - just wait for the 'mechlab.

[[IPA] Thalamus]

Sorry, I can't help but comment on the silliness of this thread.

To put it in perspective, you're arguing that a single component on one of the variants (which change every update) on one of the assets does not benefit the 'mech when viewed from the narrow lens of your personal playstyle.  In a beta.

Should we start another thread talking about the virtues of the 2 machine guns on the Puma C?  I would rather have more heatsinks.  Does the C3 on the Shadowcat D really need to be there?  Maybe another ton of ammo would be better.

We could nitpick every variant to death - just wait for the 'mechlab.

Once again. I noticed that I did not find MASC useful on that variant. Yes, exactly, I made an observation based on my personal experience (mea culpa!). Because I thought I might not be the only player, I opened a thread in this forum to review the variant and explore possible alternatives. This has, as I has, as I have said multiple times now, nothing to do with nerdraging "from the narrow lens of my personal playstyle". Come on, that's just unfair!

[[IPA] Bravo Cadett]

Sorry, I can't help but comment on the silliness of this thread.

To put it in perspective, you're arguing that a single component on one of the variants (which change every update) on one of the assets does not benefit the 'mech when viewed from the narrow lens of your personal playstyle.  In a beta.

Should we start another thread talking about the virtues of the 2 machine guns on the Puma C?  I would rather have more heatsinks.  Does the C3 on the Shadowcat D really need to be there?  Maybe another ton of ammo would be better.

We could nitpick every variant to death - just wait for the 'mechlab.

Once again. I noticed that I did not find MASC useful on that variant. Yes, exactly, I made an observation based on my personal experience (mea culpa!). Because I thought I might not be the only player, I opened a thread in this forum to review the variant and explore possible alternatives. This has, as I has, as I have said multiple times now, nothing to do with nerdraging "from the narrow lens of my personal playstyle". Come on, that's just unfair!

+1 for your kind work in this thread !
and when we never see a mechlab all this threads start's new ...