Mechwarrior 4 configs

[Timberwolf]

As this was starting to drive the MW 5 thread off topic, I thought I'd set up a new thread to help answer the fella who wanted to build an armour shredding terror.

So, here we are.

Anyway, I thought I'd contribute Team Banzai's (my old league teams mechlab (http://www.banzaiinstitute.net/InvisionBoard11/index.php?showforum=40). All of these are for an unofficial expansion pack so please do not download these and expect them to work in a basic installation of MW4 Mercenaries.

However, most of the configs you will be able to make yourself if you note down the configs and make them in game.

[13_CBS]

Sweet.

As I said in the other thread, I've found that a Daishi with 6 ER Large Lasers + 2 Ultra AC 20s = two shotting anything heavier than an armored Heavy, one shotting anything else. This build (assuming that you have cheats on) is pretty quick at wrecking assault and heavy mechs.

A Black Knight with, oh, 4 or 5 ER Large Lasers + 4 Medium X Pulse Lasers + 1 Rotary AC 5, meanwhile, is actually better for taking out Light and Medium mechs. The concentrated fire from the ER L Lasers often knocks down the lighter mechs, and also severely damages whichever body part that got hit. While they're knocked down, you can close in and finish them off with the pulse lasers and the rotary cannon.

X Pulse Lasers, particularly medium ones, aren't very powerful by themselves, but when you have 4, and the enemy's center torso is already heavily damaged....

Meanwhile, which mech in MEchwarrior 4 Mercenaries has the largest number of Ballistics slots open? I wanna try making a "Almost Enough Dakka" mech by loading the mech up with Rotary AC 5's and only Rotary AC 5's, for SCIENCE.

[blackouttwo]

I find that if you rip out the PPCs on an Uziel, replace them with CER Large Lasers, take out the Machine Guns, stick in a pair of CER Medium Pulse Lasers in the leftover space on the beam hardpoints, replace the SRM-6 with a Clan Streak SRM-6, add in some more ammo for the SRMs, and if you have the left-over tonnage, pile on some more armor and a heat-sink or two.

It's been a while since I've touched it, but I'm fairly certain this build is possible in MW4 Mercs.

[13_CBS]

After looking through the list of vanilla mechs from Mercenaries, it looks like the Mad Cat Mk II can sport the most number of Rotary AC 5s, at 5. The Atlas can get 4, but 5 is the absolute maximum, it seems.

...which is a shame since that's not nearly enough Dakka. :smallfrown:

Edit: After some testing in Instant Action through various levels of the Colosseum, using a Mad Cat Mk II armed with 5 Rotary AC 5s and 2 Clan Machinegun Arrays, I've discovered the following:

1) Your range, of course, is awful, but range matters little in arena matches.

2) It's surprisingly harder to aim due to how autocannons work in Mechwarrior 4, especially against light mechs.

3) At very close ranges where you can land all your shots, you absolutely SHRED stuff. You do a lot less damage per shot than, say, a bunch of Ultra AC 20s, but your very fast recycling rate makes up for it.

4) Unfortunately, you can't just spam the Rotary cannon since it jams very easily.

Now I will see how all of this compares to a bunch of Clan ACs, LBXes, and so forth.

Edit: I screwed around with the configurations again, this time making a Mad Cat Mk II with 12(!) Machinegun Arrays. The results were pretty much the same as the Rotary cannon experiment, except that I had much less firepower and I could fire as much as I want without worrying about jamming. Since I also had lots and lots of extra weight left over, I was able to maximize armor and upgrade engine speed, which I'm usually not able to do.

Also, a Gladiator armed with 5 or 6 Large Pulse Lasers, with an engine upgrade or two and maximized armor, makes for a very powerful Light and Medium mech killer in the arena.

Now I'm about to test out a Longbow armed with two Thunderbolt scatter missile systems and a bunch of Clan Streak 6s and 4s. FOR SCIENCE!

[Timberwolf]

rac 5's, the most you can safely tote in a campaign or multiplayer game is 5. However, the Daishi can hold 6 in terms of slots. You can load 6 RAC 2's on and they are the safer option. Why ? because they're not as jam happy and have a longer range with more ammo.

Same with ERLL, a Nova Cat has the space for 7 but you have to run armourless if you're not going to insta-kill yourself the second you fire them all from the heat. Tried it once, never again.

Try running with the heat on, it makes the game a whole lot more challenging and more fun. You can still have your ridiculous ballistic heavy rigs but running a laserboat or PPC boat is a lot more interesting.

In the Coliseum, range matters more than you think. I've run every kind of mech through there and the Gaussboat Daishi (3 CGR, 2 ERLL) remains king iof the assaults as far as I'm concerned. My favourite Cauldron Born is what I have most success in though. Rubblepile is the map where anything with more than 200 metres range is wasted.

That Longbow will melt pretty much anything as long as your missiles hold out (2 shots on the 6 packs). Load the whole lot out with 4's and you get the most bang per slot. The Tbolts are nice at range although I never took to them.

[13_CBS]

Interesting...

Anyhow, I just tried out a Longbow with about...6? Sets of Clan Streak Short ranged 6, mostly for the Macross Missile Massacre effect. It works surprisingly well against Light mechs, provided that you have infinite ammo :smalltongue:

Edit: Now I'm about to try another Longbow. Assuming that the number after the missile name represents the number of missiles fired per shot, it looks like this Mech will be shooting about 160 in one Alpha Strike.

[Timberwolf]

Infinite ammo, true. However, against a mech that's human controlled, you will have a nightmare getting that to work. Lasers work better, you need to learn the timing and aiming, but it's not that hard to do. The missileboat of any description is better used against big mechs. Against a little fella, LBX autocannon and lasers are your friend.

Ahh, the good old fashioned LRM boat. For use against slow medium mechs on up.

[13_CBS]

Infinite ammo, true. However, against a mech that's human controlled, you will have a nightmare getting that to work. Lasers work better, you need to learn the timing and aiming, but it's not that hard to do. The missileboat of any description is better used against big mechs. Against a little fella, LBX autocannon and lasers are your friend.


Ah, but I don't play online. :smallwink:



Ahh, the good old fashioned LRM boat. For use against slow medium mechs on up.

Heh. As it turns out, making an assault mech eat 160 missiles at once WILL make them fall over, period. Even an Atlas. The next salvo tends to finish them off.

Macross Missile Massacre baby!

[Timberwolf]

You should try it, bot bashing's ok but gets stale after a while.

Yep, figured it would. simple but effective.

[DranWork]

Personaly I was always a fan of maxing out my mechs with clan med lazers. Never played with cheats or anything but i found that with some smart shots I could down anything I wanted by the end game where Assult mechs become easly avaliable.

Usualy Id max out my Clan med lazers then put something like an Ac 20 with it so that it would only take 2 shots on almost everything. Was never a fan of missles either Even with the locking systems it was just pointless imo to have them. Also hated the mech's that either had a patruding cockpit (catapult and the like) or had weak and easy blown up limbs (Mad cat's and the like im looking at you!) Against a skilled player you can pin point everything so easly. Legs are the easiest to blow away and odd cockpits are just as easy without either the mech is out of the fight and a sitting duck (sans the damn bots that use jumpjets to hop around once theres no legs)

Always liked clan mechs over Inner mechs but in the early stages ive always loved my little Assassin mech :) he was so fun to use. Later on I liked the Dashi, Mad Cat Mk2, Templar (no idea why but yeah.. effective when i needed it to be and fielding 3 of them in my 2nd lance was fun) Was never a fan of the Atlas however... that thing just looks terrable. Marauders where fun as well as Awesomes. HATED to pilot Catapults or longbows or anything that was missile heavy and for some reasion never liked the design of the Thantos

[Mo_the_Hawked]

You guys are using the wrong mechs. It's a Cougar you need. And no not the damn 3erll model. 2ERLL 131 top speed and jumps. Used to go daisy hunting with it.

[Timberwolf]

You guys are using the wrong mechs. It's a Cougar you need. And no not the damn 3erll model. 2ERLL 131 top speed and jumps. Used to go daisy hunting with it.

Nice ride. I could never make the Cougie work though, those side torsoes were always a bit big for me but for jump sniping, yeah, I quite agree.

However for light mechs, as far as I go, Raven + Uller > all.

Raven - 4 med pulse / however many xpulse are practical and kill steal like no one else.

Zippo Raven - Flamer plus arty strikes :D

Uller - Basic MW 4 - 3 ERLL and you're set

Mercs Mekpak versions...

CLBX 20, 2 xHSL

CGR, 2x HsL

God bless the advent of the 3 slot Omni point in the arm, even if it's horrifyingly vulnerable.

And for giggles - Uller, no armour, min speed, ECM, Long Tom. Only possible with the Mektek patch.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

And for giggles - Uller, no armour, min speed, ECM, Long Tom. Only possible with the Mektek patch.

Now thats interresting, :)

And the Cougar wasn't for Jump Sniping...eww jump sniping...the cougar was for out manuvering larger mechs at point blank range. Moving fast and staying out of there twist range. Pecking at their CTs untill they drop

[mangosta71]

Also hated the mech's that either had a patruding cockpit (catapult and the like)

In Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, the Catapult was the 'Mech you assigned to someone that you wanted dead. Due to its hit box arrangement, it was insanely easy to shoot out the cockpit. Even without deliberately aiming for it, any time I killed one with direct fire weapons I took it out with a headshot.


or had weak and easy blown up limbs (Mad cat's and the like im looking at you!)

This is a bit surprising to me as the Timber Wolf carries maximum armor for its tonnage, and so it's harder to blow anything off it than most other 'Mechs its size...

[Rockphed]

How many flamer hits does it take to shut somebody down? My brother made a nova cat with 7 flamers, but it could barely keep mechs with heavy energy weapons locked down without overheating itself.

[Timberwolf]

How many flamer hits does it take to shut somebody down? My brother made a nova cat with 7 flamers, but it could barely keep mechs with heavy energy weapons locked down without overheating itself.

Hmmmm, I never had any problem with just one flamer. You need to be circumspect in using them though. Perhaps if he'd gone for maybe 4 instead it would have worked better. Mind you, that nova will have trouble scoring, he needed some weapons to actually do the killing as forcing people to suicide ganks your points.

The Uller was insane. I always found the Cougar to be horrifyingly vulnerable in a brawl so that's why I prefer the Raven - small, fast, agile and 360 twist.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Yes the Cougar's bulk did make a better target, but It could actually kill another mech. In my experince the Raven has never had any knock down power. In BK I used a Woulfhound with a single CERPPC and max speed, now that was a hard to hit mech. You actually run through the colums on those one bank looking buldings.

[Timberwolf]

Ahhh the Wolfie, aka "The Angry Pencil". 9 ER small lasers was surprisingly effective there although I always prefered the 3 ERLL route.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Too much heat. Slows you down makes you an easy target.

[Timberwolf]

It was workable. The ERLL were for sniping when speed was less of an issue. The small lasers, they were ok on the heat, never had a problem, especially with chain fire :D

[TheThan]

My favorite mech build is: Thethan’s special.

It’s a decked out bushwhacker with 1 clan AC10, 1 ER large laser, clan Streak 6 SRMs, anti-missile suite and max armor (and I mean maxed out armor).
Thethan’s special is 55 tons of carnage, fast, hard to kill and packs a serious wallop. I took all four open solaris VII championships in this baby those fools in the slow heavies and assaults had no idea what hit them.

[Timberwolf]

That's a nice config there, my bushwacker was always 2 er meds, CLBX 20, Clbx 10 and a streak 4 but i always used that config when i didn't have a clbx knocking about.

[Breltar]

Looks like the mektek packs will be included in the free download so all the MW3 mechs will be included, as well as some others. I think a swarm of elementals could do damage to any heavy mech.

[ZeroNumerous]

It’s a decked out bushwhacker with 1 clan AC10, 1 ER large laser, clan Streak 6 SRMs, anti-missile suite and max armor (and I mean maxed out armor).

Mine was much the same, except I was running twin medium pulses, a Rotary AC/2 and a CLBX20. Easily blew through any other medium, several Heavies and could go toe-to-toe with an Assault for a little while. Also incredibly effective against tanks, copters and light mechs early in the game.

[Timberwolf]

A really successful Bushwacker (and this has stood the user, who isn't me, in good stead throughout several Solarisleague medium matches in an online league) is 2 Rac 2's and a large Xpulse. Hang around the edges of a fight and use the Xpulse when you jam up.

[TheThan]

I used to run a light gauss rifle but I find its harder to hit with at close ranges. So I switched to the AC 10/ heavy laser combo. Besides the heavy laser doesn’t have the ammo reliance problem, has a decent recharge rate and hits hard. If you can’t fit PPCs, fit heavy lasers.

Another fun mech I used to run was a black knight, decked out with two ultra ac 10s and two ER PPCs. Sure the recharge time was a killer, but that thing dished out so much destruction it was worth the trade off.


But the best for open solaris matches is the flee. You deck it out with two light lasers and all the armor and engines it can hold. Then you just run around and pinprick everything to death. It takes forever and you’ll be short on kills, but as long as you don’t stop your near impossible to hit. If you pick your targets good enough you can steal kills.

[Rustic Dude]

I used to play in two servers withaout heat, and with infinite ammunition. (The only ones without lag) and all people were using that damned Novacats with a bunch of lasers. In plain scenarios it was a nightmare, but in rocky, irregular terrains, it was fun as hell to ambush them with my Shadowcat: 2 or 3 Large Lasers, and one AC/6(Or eight? I can't remember) for harassing at long distances. It was almost one shot one kill when they shot me, but thats added flavor. For heavy mechs, I used a Mad Cat(Or Timberwolf if you want, you clanners) because it had got certain....style. Oh, and LRM.


Also: What do you think of killing an enemy by jumping over his cockpit? :smallbiggrin:

[blackouttwo]

Also: What do you think of killing an enemy by jumping over his cockpit? :smallbiggrin:

DEEEEEEEATH FROM ABOOOOOOOOVE! *smash, grinding metal, squishysquish as enemy pilot dies*

Yeah, DFA rocks.

[Timberwolf]

DEEEEEEEATH FROM ABOOOOOOOOVE! *smash, grinding metal, squishysquish as enemy pilot dies*

Yeah, DFA rocks.

What he says.

Because of the game system not allowing 1 hit kills though, you need to do it twice so actually killing anyone with it is nigh unheard of.

I've managed to land DFA's about 3 times ever. My favourite has to be the one I did with a Cauldron Born, a jumpjetless mech. For anyone familiar with multiplayer maps, it was on VOS Chalkdust, a tiny map with a massive earth berm between the drop zones and 2 bridges connecting the edges of the berm with the walls, there for no appreciable reason. I'd just killed someone in a brawl on top of the berm that had spilled over onto a bridge and because it was team radar only on the server, I had no idea someone on the other team was lurking underneath so when I walked off the bridge onto his head it came as a shock to both of us. I won that fight too because I stood up again facing the right way wheras he ended up facing away from me.

[Penguinizer]

All this talk of MW4 is making me wnt to instal mine.
Now I just have to find the CDs.

[Morrandir]

What he says.

Because of the game system not allowing 1 hit kills though, you need to do it twice so actually killing anyone with it is nigh unheard of.

I've managed to land DFA's about 3 times ever. My favourite has to be the one I did with a Cauldron Born, a jumpjetless mech. For anyone familiar with multiplayer maps, it was on VOS Chalkdust, a tiny map with a massive earth berm between the drop zones and 2 bridges connecting the edges of the berm with the walls, there for no appreciable reason. I'd just killed someone in a brawl on top of the berm that had spilled over onto a bridge and because it was team radar only on the server, I had no idea someone on the other team was lurking underneath so when I walked off the bridge onto his head it came as a shock to both of us. I won that fight too because I stood up again facing the right way wheras he ended up facing away from me.

Oh, man, just yesterday I was trying out the Mektek patches, experimenting with the new 'Mechs and whatnot, when I actually managed to land a DFA attack. However, I was in a Wasp, and I put the bot in a target practice 'Mech; an Atlas with a single machine gun so that I could play with the new weapons in a safe(er) environment.

So, pretty much what happened is, I flew up, kicked the Atlas in the face, did not even scratch the paint job, tripped, and faceplanted into the dirt behind it.

Guess there was a reason it was made a famous move for heavy and assault 'Mechs.

[Timberwolf]

I managed to knock over a Hauptmann by landing a Brigand on it's head (my other DFA was landing a Shadowcat on a Thor) so it can be done but yeah, best to do it in a heavier mech.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

The ERLL were for sniping when speed was less of an issue.


I always used ERLLs for brawling, cause you only need to clip the CT for a fraction of a second and all the damage goes there.

[Rustic Dude]

I only managed to do that once, playing online.

It was funny. It happened in a forest map with huge mountains, and it was awesome. Why? Because I landed with my Shadow Cat on an Awesome.

Ironic.:smallbiggrin:

I got my legs trashed, but his torso was trashed too, so I hit him with a Large Laser and Kaboom!(Then I got trashed too)

[Timberwolf]

Yeah, my Shadowcat episode was roughly similar although more of a Matrix style moment - I ran up the ramp of a parking garage, hit the jets at the top of the ramp, DFAed the Thor and shot him in the chest with an LBX 20, 2 lasers and a Streak 6 while sliding along the ground. Then he blew up.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Good old dfa...can't beat it.

[Morrandir]

Good old dfa...can't beat it.

Killing Assault 'Mechs with puny weapons might be able to.

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/215/urbanmechbygannadene.jpg

I <3 my Urbie.

Speaking of, am I the only one who sometimes reconfigures the 'Mechs in 4 to have their "standard" loadout, just to see how it holds up?

An AC/10 on a 30 tonner is surprisingly effective.

[Timberwolf]

I'm afraid I've always been a diehard custom rigger, simply because the stock loadouts (most of the time they're fairly close to the CBT game) have paper thin armour and I find I can max the armour and still put on more firepower if I do it myself

[Othesemo]

I once made a very effective mech in MW4. I took a hauptman, stripped all of the default weapons, and added in two inferno rocket launchers and a heavy Gauss rifle. Because the infernos have such a fast recycle time, I could overheat an atlas in about six seconds. I'd then continue to blast it at point blank range, ensuring that it would stay down, until I found its head. Then, the heavy Gauss rifle came into play.

[Mando Knight]

Because of the game system not allowing 1 hit kills though, you need to do it twice so actually killing anyone with it is nigh unheard of.
I'm not so sure... I've headcapped a guy by accident on Solaris. Didn't even realize it was a kill (just firing at anything even barely visible while heading to my designated target), or even a hit (fired at his head as it was peeking over a hill for just a second) until the announcer exclaimed that yet another 'Mech jockey was ejecting.

He might have had some damage before, but all I did was see his head pop up and give it a once-over with my PPC.

[Othesemo]

Here's another fun build. Get a Black Lanner with 4 CSTRK 4s and 2 ER Medium Pulse Lasers. Give him 7 heatsinks, get his speed to a bit over 100, and max his armor.

You can circle of death ANYTHING. I've taken out a friend using a sunder with that mech. The ridiculous torso twist helps, too.

[Breltar]

I'm wondering how much we are going to be able to customize our mechs in the upcoming MWO title though... might not be as easy as MW4 was.


I've been trying to play stock davion or variants of such mechs. Not as many to choose from in MW4 but it is still possible.