equipment

[Doctor Baron]

Well, if a Raven get's hit in the cockpit with an HGauss, it's destroyed, but an Atlas takes more.
Depends on how much armor the mech has on it's cockpit.

Heh true but the Raven doesn't have "HIT ME!" painted on its cockpit, like the atlas.

I snuck my way into an atlas when I was a GC, got shot in the head twice by a hollander chump's Hguass before I tore him to shreds and then I got ganked heavily by 2 madcats. Then they trashed the atlas after I died. At least youd think theyd have the common courtesy to take it and kill someone else with it.

I did that to a madcat mkii though. Blew out the head, stole it, walked it back to base at 20km/hr literally, fixed the armor but not the engine, and ditched it.

[4204ME]

I aim for weapons first..... Ofcourse I only have one day one the mod so far and am not sure where they all are on some variants yet.

[Wallenstein]

I assume the giant "dome cockpit" of a Mad Cat isn't all actually cockpit or the things'd be deathtraps.  Is there a "sub-cockpit," in the centre of it?

I've been a bit torn on this issue because just aiming for centre-of-mass probably gives you the best chance of a safe hit if there's any lag, and also probably provides the best focus-fire with teammates doing the same thing.  I've tried aiming for cockpits that are 'obvious' but had such mixed results that I'd given up.  I sort of decided that mech-by-mech "cockpits" probably didn't match the visual appearance and I should stop wasting valuable seconds waiting to fire recycled weapons by aiming for 'glass.'

The way legs work seems pretty sensible.  You can usually tell if it'll be a good idea or not.  I tried legging a lighter mech during a circle-of-death and... well, I deserved to lose doing something that dumb.  A missile-boat, though, or an assault/heavy mech taking a long slow walk?  Great opportunity.

EDIT:  Does anyone know, incidentally, how much damage a man-pack PPC does relative to the mech version, and if the range is still 700m?  It's obviously still "powerful-ish," but knowing exact figures would give a better since of just how long you should mess around the battlefield after ejecting.  If it's doing 1/3rd damage or less I'd be more inclined to hoof it back to base and grab a Harasser with spare change.

It's be nice, in general, to get a breakdown of weapon damage and mech armour, even if the devs wanted to leave a certain amount of "black box" game mechanics to foil munchkinism.  As it is I'm kind of "guessing" as to the respective sturdiness of different mechs and the potency of different weapons.  I might prefer the loadout of a Catapult to a Warhammer on a certain map, but I strongly suspect the Warhammer is the tougher mech...  How much tougher?  The actual variants on sarna.net actually are different depending on loadout and so on.

I don't personally really want a mechbay because I think it'll lead to FOTM-boating, but I know it's what people want.  Given that we're eventually going to be in munchkin heaven anyway, it'd be cool to have some more numbers for armour and weapon stats.  (How much tougher is a Kitfox than a Raven, eg)

[~SJ~ Tajin Nevversan]

I've tried aiming for cockpits that are 'obvious' but had such mixed results that I'd given up.  I sort of decided that mech-by-mech "cockpits" probably didn't match the visual appearance and I should stop wasting valuable seconds waiting to fire recycled weapons by aiming for 'glass.'

Don't give up so easily. Hitting cockpits works fine for me. Btw. in some cases it helps to use weapons that have splashdamage, this way you'll still damage the cockpit when you miss slightly. PPCs and ACs are great. (guess why I love the shadowcat so much )

ps.: BAs also shouldn't underestimate the spalshdamage an UAC20 does. Sure its a slow-firing weapon so it would be logical to assume that an mech armed with a PPC and an UAC20 would be an easy BA-target but BAs go splat pretty fast when you hit anywere near them with the AC (even befor the patch).

[Uranium - 235]

The cockpit damage areas are a lot more sensible than they were in MW4 I'll give them that.

As it is, some mechs are more vulnerable than others. The Hollander is pretty safe because it's offset - stray torso shots have decreased chance of hitting it, splash from missiles that are targeting the center of mass, as well as it just being an unexpected place to have it. The Mad Dog is pretty vulnerable to missile fire but not much else. It's almost impossible to shoot the cockpit without being on higher elevation.

[~SJ~ Tajin Nevversan]

Oh right, the hollander . I love shooting the right torso of the HeavyGauss Variants and watch them running or ejecting after they've lost their only weapon. Great fun.

The Warhammer cockpit is pretty easy to hit imho, same goes for the atlas ofcourse. It's a bit hard on the awesome as it's kinda hard to see. Vulture is also protected pretty well against direct fire but vulnerable to LRM attacks.

[Maelstrom]

Only one hit kill I've ever seen was when I hit a undamaged Cougar with a HGauss.

Always worth trying to shoot for the head - I've one many battles that I would have otherwise lost by accurately shooting the head.

One other tip: don't always fire your weapons the instant they recycle/reload - it is often better to hold your shot for a second or two to aim for a vunerable location, or wait for a shot at the rear.